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Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff and vice president elect Mike Pence don't always see eye to eye.

Benioff famously went to war with Pence last year when the Indiana governor signed a law that would have potentially allowed business owners to refuse to serve people based on their religious beliefs. Benioff threatened to move Salesforce out of Indiana, where it's the largest tech employer, and eventually got Pence to change the law.

Even as recently as September, Benioff warned people not to vote for Pence, saying he could do "some very bad things to the people that we love."

But now that the election is over and Pence is slated to be vice president of the country, Benioff is taking a step back. 

During Salesforce's earnings call on Thursday, Benioff said it's time to put the election in the past and move forward. He said:

"In my view, it’s in the past, we’re moving forward. We have a beginner’s mind and we have a sense of optimism for future, and we’re going to cultivate that optimism and we’re going to manifest it into our business because that is how we operate here.

I have met with CEOs of some of the largest companies in the world this week, and in each and every case, all of them are moving forward, OK? And we know what we have to do. We now need to execute."

It's understandable why Benioff wants to make nice with Pence. Salesforce is a $50 billion business that generates 75% of its revenue from the US, and there's no good for him to pick a fight with the second most powerful political figure in the world.

Benioff isn't the only CEO to take a much warmer stance on the Trump administration. Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos has congratulated the president-elect recently, while GE CEO Jeff Immelt is now saying he "looks forward to working with Trump," after calling his racist comments "unacceptable."

NOW WATCH: It’s surreal to watch this 2011 video of Obama and Seth Meyers taunting Trump about a presidential run

Sixty-six teams of competitors from countries all around the world converged on Zurich, Switzerland, for what’s been called the first cyborg Olympics. But “Cybathlon” is much more than just a series of games—it’s a more like a super trade-show for assistive technology, where cutting edge creations that help humans grapple with disability can be displayed, and ideas exchanged about how to improve them. 

People who have been robotically enhanced are paired with researchers including roboticists and neurologists. Competitors with similar disabilities compete in Olympic-style races where the fastest time wins: One arm prosthetic race included household chores like hanging clothes and cutting bread.

The researchers use the experiences of disabled competitors to explore the limitations of current technology in an effort to develop and commercialize the unique devices being used in the games.

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Republican President-elect Donald Trump’s decision to make Russian leader Vladimir Putin his new best friend on the international front has been causing heartburn among some conservatives who are warning the New York businessman that he is traveling down a dangerous path.

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), the chair of the Senate Armed Services Committee and a former GOP presidential nominee who has frequently differed with Trump, delivered a blistering speech from the Senate floor on Tuesday.

He ridiculed Trump’s attempt to “reset” U.S-Russian relations after a frosty stretch and denounced Putin for murdering his political opponents, invading Ukraine, threatening America’s allies, tampering with the U.S. election and siding with Syrian President Bashar al-Assad in a civil war that has decimated the country.

“At the very least, the price of another ‘reset’ would be complicity in Putin and Assad’s butchery of the Syrian people,” McCain bellowed. “That is an unacceptable price for a great nation. When America has been at its greatest, it is when we have stood on the side those fighting tyranny. That is where we must stand again.”

Trump’s blossoming bromance with Putin has long galled the GOP’s political establishment and prompted sharp rejoinders from many of his GOP presidential primary opponents who for the most part share the views of President Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton that Putin cannot be trusted.

In a provocative and unpatriotic campaign message, Trump frequently praised Putin for being a much stronger leader than Obama and for being willing to fight ISIS terrorists in Syria. "If Putin wants to go and knock the hell out of ISIS, I am all for it, 100 percent, and I can't understand how anybody would be against it," Trump said during the fourth Republican presidential debate.

Former Florida governor Jeb Bush said during the primaries that Trump’s views on Putin were emblematic of a foreign policy novice who doesn’t grasp "how the real world works." And Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida said, "I've never met Vladimir Putin, but I know enough about him to know that he's a gangster.”

Mark Wilson/Getty Images

Now the Heritage Foundation, one of the most prominent conservative think-tanks in Washington that is strongly backing the president-elect, has issued a new global study concluding that Putin’s Russia poses the gravest threat to the United States and its NATO allies – even more than Iran, Middle East and African terrorist groups, China or North Korea. 

The Heritage Foundation’s “2017 Index of the Military Strength,” a report that has been in the works for months, was released just days after the November 8 election and Trump’s phone conversation with Putin on Monday. The two men reportedly agreed to work together to improve relations between the two countries that are at the lowest level since the Cold War and find common cause in Syria in combatting ISIS terrorism.

Putin has been playing Trump like a violin ever since he told an ABC reporter last December that he thought Trump, a former reality TV host, was “a very colorful person -- talented without a doubt. Trump took that as a supreme compliment, and boasted afterward that the Russian leader considered him to be “brilliant” or even a “genius.”

Though the two men had never met, Trump couldn’t say enough good things about him. That was doubly the case even after U.S. national intelligence and homeland security experts confirmed last month that high-level Russian officials had authorized the hacking of Democratic National Committee emails subsequently posted on WikiLeaks to try to influence the election. Trump also continued to praise Putin after Secretary of State John Kerry called for the Russian and Syrian governments to face a formal war-crimes investigation over attacks on civilians in Aleppo and other parts of war-torn Syria.

But the new Heritage study implicitly warns Trump against the high risks of cozying up with a Russian strong man who orchestrated an invasion of the Crimean Peninsula of Ukraine, poses a growing threat to Central Europe and is pummeling and killing tens of thousands of rebels and innocent residents in Syria in the service of propping up the Assad regime. 

“Russia seeks to maximize its strategic position in the world at the expense of the United States,” according to the new report, which was first reported yesterday by The Washington Post. “It also seeks to undermine U.S. influence and moral standing, harass U.S. and North Atlantic Treaty Organization forces and is working to sabotage U.S. and Western policy in Syria. 

“Russia’s explicitly belligerent behavior during the past year further adds to the need for the U.S. to give due consideration to Russia’s ability to place the security of the U.S. at risk,” the study warns.

Mark Wilson/Getty ImagesRetired Army Lt. Gen. Thomas W. Spoehr, the director of Heritage’s Center for National Defense, told The Post that the foundation “unequivocally believes” that Russia poses a threat, adding that he fears that the U.S. could be left behind as Russia, China and other adversaries continue to build up their military. Jim DeMint, the former U.S. senator from South Carolina and president of the Heritage Foundation, authored the preface of the lengthy study. 

On a scale from “very weak” to “very strong,” the new Heritage index describes the Army as “weak” and the remainder of the U.S. armed services – including the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines and nuclear defenses – were described as “marginal.”

“While all six threats [from rival nations and terrorists] have been quite prob­lematic in their behavior and in their impact on their respective regions, Russia and China continue to be the most worrisome, both be­cause of the investments they are making in the modernization and expansion of their offensive military capabilities and because of the more enduring effect they are having within their respective regions,” the study states. 

“Russia has maintained its active involvement in the con­flict in Ukraine and has inserted itself into the Syrian conflict, and China’s provocative be­havior has expanded to include militarization of islands that it has built in highly disputed international waters” in the South China Sea. 

The findings bolster the importance of the U.S. alliance with NATO forces and are completely contrary to the New York billionaire businessman’s global view of Putin, the former KGB officer and iron-fisted leader. Those views potentially could complicate Heritage’s efforts to influence the shaping of the president-elect’s cabinet and other senior positions in the new administration.

A number of prominent figures with ties to Heritage have been assisting Trump’s transition team, including Rebekah A. Mercer, a wealthy Republican party donor who is on the foundation’s board of trustees; Edwin Feulner, the former president of the Heritage Foundation, and Edwin Meese, a former top Reagan administration official, and James Jay Carafano, a heritage vice president and national security expert. 

Trump’s transition team, charged with helping to assemble Trump’s national security and foreign policy, has been in disarray following a purge of senior transition officials who had been recruited by New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. Christie was dumped after running afoul of Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner. 

Neither Spoehr nor a spokesman for the foundation was available for comment.

NOW WATCH: The ‘Apple of China’ just unveiled a phone that’s more powerful and better looking than the iPhone

A water meter reader gone rogue is leading to some higher-than-usual water bills for North Marin Water District customers in Novato.

Water district officials reported getting an unusually high number of complaints from customers about pricey bills in September and October.

“All the calls we got triggered an investigation,” said Chris DeGabriele, general manager of the district.

It turned out there was a reason for the spike. Customers were undercharged over the summer by a meter reader who apparently was estimating water use, instead of logging in actual totals as he entered figures into his hand-held computer while making his rounds in the field.

When bills were adjusted to reflect actual use, the make-up tallies made it appear as though customers were using more water in the period than they actually did. Those catch-up counts of water catapulted users into higher — and more expensive — tiers of water use, even though their usage was stable.

Water officials say customers will have those fees waived. In fact, because it is having trouble identifying which customers’ meters were not read, all tier charges will be waived from the Nov. 10 through Jan. 5 billing cycles. That move approved by the water board Tuesday will cost the district at least $50,000 in revenue. The district has an overall budget of about $35 million.

About 15 to 20 percent of the district’s roughly 60,000 customers are affected. Because meters are read once every two months, bills received this month or in December may include a catch-up cost arising from the prior under-reported meter reading.

After the complaints came in about high bills, water district officials conducted an audit. They noticed July and August meter readings were abnormally low for summer, a time when water consumption typically increases as the days grow warmer. Initially, water officials were perplexed at the low readings.

Eventually staffers discovered the employee “had been recording a significant number of meter reads in quick succession,” wrote David Bentley, the water district’s auditor controller, in a report on the investigation. “The hand-held computer into which the (employee) enters meter reads time stamps each read. Staff discovered that an (employee) hired in May of 2015 was reading meters at a speed that defied reason.”

Some of the meters were read in less than 10 seconds, according to general manager DeGabriele.

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“That’s when we knew something was amiss,” he said.

The worker apparently figured that if he entered a low total, customers wouldn’t complain and he wouldn’t have to read every meter.

The employee was confronted and he admitted he had been “just punching in the numbers” and he was fired, according to Bentley’s report.

“We really have no idea (why),” DeGabriele said.

It will take another six weeks of readings to accurately assess water use in areas that were read incorrectly. New controls are being put into place, including random field audits to assure readings are correct. Other mechanisms will alert supervisors if reads are occurring too fast.

In addition, the water district is planning to install “advanced meter information” equipment to enable remote, more accurate meter reading rather than the traditional manual process within the next two years.

“We do apologize to all our customers for this,” DeGabriele said.

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The transit center in downtown San Rafael will have to be revamped quickly so SMART trains can pass through the hub en route to Larkspur as soon as 2018.

The big changes will come as Golden Gate Bridge district officials make plans to move the entire center in as soon as five years.

It was the district that gave Sonoma-Marin Area Rail Transit a right of way through the center, so the disruption is not a complete surprise.

Officials at the district, which runs buses in and out of the transit center, initially planned to study the center’s future and where it might be located as SMART came online.

But last December SMART officials announced the agency was in line to receive funding to extend the commuter rail service to Larkspur, which includes going through the transit center. With construction of commuter train service to Larkspur starting as soon as summer 2017, the transit center will have to be revamped to squeeze rail and bus service into the site.

COMPLETE COVERAGE >> SMART TRAIN

“When the study was originally conceived we thought the SMART extension to Larkspur would be several years in the future,” Ron Downing, director of planning for the district, told the Transportation Committee on Thursday. “The study changed course when we realized that extension would be happening a lot sooner.”

Construction will include new tracks, barriers and crossing arms. The rail line will go through Platform C, eliminating bus stops, meaning passengers will be picked up on adjacent streets instead. The Marin Airporter will pick up its passengers on Fourth Street under Highway 101, a block from the transit center. Cijos Street also will undergo improvements so it can better accommodate bus traffic.

Those changes will be permanent even after SMART finishes putting track through the transit center. That’s because the rail line will have to be sectioned off by concrete so pedestrians can’t cross tracks, limiting access to buses at the center. Presently, pedestrians can go from platform to platform without restriction.

The modifications are expected to cost about $3.5 million, money provided by the Metropolitan Transportation Commission that was intended to be used for an abandoned ferry project at Port Sonoma.

The transit center — known as the C. Paul Bettini Transit Center for a former mayor — opened in 1991 and is used by 9,000 people daily.

The bridge district eventually wants to build a new transit center in the same area. Committee members Thursday discussed three sites, including using the existing site between Second and Third streets and land between Third and Fourth streets. A second option would use land between Third and Fourth streets and Fourth Street and Fifth Avenue, where Citibank and House of Bagels are now. A new site will likely involve buying property that currently houses buildings.

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Another possible site would stretch from Fourth Street to Mission Avenue. That design would close Fifth Avenue to vehicle traffic at the SMART train tracks, which has sparked concern from San Rafael officials who note downtown is already congested.

A new transit center would cost between $32 million and $42 million, according to preliminary estimates, and could be funded by federal grants. Housing on top of a new transit center also could be part of the mix, officials said.

Passengers will have to live with the new alignments at the existing transit center for the near future, officials said.

“A new transit center is at least five years away,” said Denis Mulligan, bridge district general manager.

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bob-belcher:

shocking U.S. events:

• 9/11
  
• 11/9
  

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Does Trump’s economic plan carry the seeds of its own demise?

Trump’s blasted Janet Yellen and the Fed for keeping interest rates artificially low. But if he’s going to spend over $1 trillion on national infrastructure over the next decade, he might have to whistle a different number…

Trump’s plan calls for a combination of public and private investment in roads, bridges, airports, utilities, etc.

Low interest rates are the key. Says Wilbur Ross, billionaire investor and Trump economic adviser, “With interest rates so low, this has got to be the best time from a break-even point of view, from a societal point of view.”

But Ross indirectly points out the joker in the deck: “With interest rates so low”…

Trump’s massive spending proposals have raised the specter of inflation at long last. But those same inflation expectations have the Fed ready to pounce. Fed funds futures are showing a 91% chance of a rate hike next month.

If Trump’s plans make it over the hurdles and inflation starts flexing its muscles, the Fed might have to start raising interest rates aggressively to put a lid on it.

But could those rising interest rates play the devil with the entire proposal? Could they, in fact, sabotage the whole thing? Trump’s proposals seem to make sense only in a low interest rate world. Their assumption of cheap money may be the fatal flaw, the hole below the waterline…

Goldman put the Trump plan under its microscope. It concluded that “Mr. Trump’s infrastructure plan implies that a significant increase in interest rates could be a hurdle for the plan’s feasibility.”

And Kessler Investment Advisors says that “the Trump administration [needs] low rates to try to sell fiscal stimulus to the nation…”

Here’s why…

When interest rates rise, so does the cost of servicing debt — not just new debt, but old debt that gets rolled over in the form of freshly issued Treasuries. And they’re rolled over at the going rate, not the old one. So the cost of servicing all that debt rises if rates rise.

Despite the mounting $19 trillion national debt, servicing that debt has been a manageable affair for the past several years.

Last year, for example, Uncle Samuel forked over $223 billion to keep the chains of debt around his neck. That’s less than he paid to service his debt 10 years ago, when the national debt was only about 40% of today’s.

The difference? Low interest rates. The Fed’s monetary contortion acts over the past eight years have nailed rates to the floor. So despite the higher total debt, it’s actually cost less to finance.

If rates start rising, a different… darker… picture emerges…

The Fiscal Times reports the findings of the Committee for a Responsible Federal Budget. Those findings show that if 3-month Treasuries rise to about 4% by 2018, and if 10-year Treasuries rise from today’s 2.24% to roughly 5.2%, “interest payments on the federal debt will soar to $505 billion in 2018.”

That’s $282 billion higher than last year. The point being, debt doesn’t seem to matter… until it does. University of Chicago finance Professor John Cochrane:

"Here’s the nightmare scenario: Suppose that four years from now, interest rates rise 5%, i.e., go back to normal, and the U.S. has $20 trillion outstanding. Interest costs alone will rise $1 trillion (5% of $20 trillion) multiplying already unsustainable deficits! This is what happened to Italy, Spain and Portugal. Don’t think it can’t happen to us. It’s even more likely, because fear of inflation — which did not hit them, since they are on the euro — can hit us."

Macro economist Richard Duncan is a Daily Reckoning contributor. Bear in mind Richard’s a boomer for quantitative easing and ultra-low rates. But he says in no uncertain terms that interest rates must not be allowed to rise to normal levels. Richard recently fired off a letter of advice to President-elect Trump. From which:

"You have… been elected at a time when the global economy is in grave danger of collapsing into a depression, one from which it might not recover for decades — if ever… If interest rates go up significantly, the bubble will pop and the New Great Depression will begin. One wrong move on your part and the economy will spiral out of control into a depression. It won’t be short and sharp like 1921. It will be long and devastating like 1929–1945."

One wrong move doesn’t allow much wiggle room. Richard says Trump can’t impose trade tariffs or cut taxes, which are both planks of his agenda. They’re both inflationary in Richard’s estimate. And inflation will bring higher interest rates…

Tariffs would drive up the price of imports and fuel inflation. And cutting taxes would increase the budget deficit, forcing the government to borrow more. Trump needs to spend on infrastructure, says Richard. But he has to get it right, no tariffs or tax cuts… or else face the above scenario.

We don’t pretend to know if Richard’s right or how it all plays out in the months and years ahead. But of this we are certain: Donald Trump, president, cannot be Donald Trump, reality show star.

The only question is… can he successfully switch roles?

NOW WATCH: How the ‘perfect body’ for men has changed over the last 150 years

Rep. Tom Price (R-GA), the chairman of the budget committee, told reporters on Thursday that Republicans are eyeing major changes to Medicare in 2017.

NOW WATCH: Animated map shows where your bottled water actually comes from

Thomson Reuters

One of the oil world’s longest and best kept secrets may finally be revealed. Saudi Arabia is preparing to unveil how much oil it holds, a closely guarded state secret that has been kept quiet for decades.

The decision to bring such important data to light comes as Saudi Aramco is preparing to partially privatize its assets, an IPO that could bring in some $100 billion. The IPO will be a monumental event, one that the Wall Street Journal says could offer Wall Street some of the largest fees in history.

Saudi Arabia often trades off with Russia – and more recently, with the U.S. – as the world’s largest oil producer. But while it produces at similar levels as Russia and the U.S., it is long been a vastly more influential player in the oil world. That is because of two reasons – the size of its reserves, and the ability to use latent spare capacity to quickly adjust supply, affording it an outsized influence on crude oil prices.

But while everyone believes Saudi Arabia has some of the largest oil reserves in the world, perhaps rivaled only by Venezuela, there has been a lot of uncertainty and skepticism over exactly how much sits beneath the Saudi desert. The world’s largest oil field, Ghawar, has been producing since the 1950s, raising speculation about the longevity of the supergiant oilfield. It alone is thought to hold around 75 billion barrels, and it churns out more than 5 million barrels every single day. Surely, it cannot continue like this indefinitely, but the Kingdom has not revised its official reserves for years, which have stood at 260 billion barrels since the 1980s. It is hard to overstate how valuable this information is, and how fiercely Saudi leadership protected it.

However, the collapse of oil prices since 2014 has pushed the Saudi budget deep into the red. The Deputy Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is undergoing an historic transformation of the Saudi economy, a multi-decade plan to diversify the country’s economic base and create new sources of revenue. At the heart of the plan is spinning off roughly 5 percent of Saudi Aramco, the most valuable oil company in the world. Saudi officials believe that the company is worth between $2 and $3 trillion.

But in order to settled on a valuation and launch an IPO of some of Aramco’s assets, investors need to get a look beneath the hood. That is why Saudi Arabia is now prepared to unveil not just its financials, but also the long sought after data surrounding its oil reserves. “Everything that Saudi Aramco has, that will be shared, that will be verified by independent third parties,”Khalid al-Falih, Saudi Arabia’s energy minister, told the Financial Times in an interview. That would include, “reserves … costs [and] profitability indicators.” He went to lengths to emphasize Saudi Arabia’s seriousness about the IPO, in an effort to dampen skepticism. “This is going to be the most transparent national oil company listing of all time,” he said.

There is a great deal of suspicion regarding Saudi Arabia’s insistence that its reserves still stand at 260 billion barrels. After all, how could such a figure stay constant when it is producing 9 to 10 million barrels every day, which adds up to a few billion barrels each year? Aramco would have to add billions of barrels of newly discovered reserves on an annual basis in order to prevent its reserve base from declining. It is doubtful that it has done that consistently since the 1980s. But nobody knows except the Saudis.

As the FT notes, this figure will have massive ramifications for both Saudi Arabia and the global oil market. Right now, everyone is operating under the assumption that Saudi Arabia can continue to pump at its current pace for another seven decades. Long-term oil forecasts are predicated, in part, on Aramco’s ability to do that. More important for Saudi Arabia itself, its credit rating as well as the fortunes of its economy over the coming decades is also predicated on that assumption. A sharply lower reserve estimate could send oil futures up if fears over supply surface, and it might also affect Saudi Arabia’s credit rating.

Aramco is preparing to launch the IPO in 2018, which means that it will need to publish data on its oil reserves before then. The oil world’s biggest secret could soon be publicly released.

NOW WATCH: Here's how Donald Trump can function on barely any sleep — and why you shouldn't copy him

Sunday funday.

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A flat tire is a thing that can ruin even the best bike trip. However, riders can forget dragging around their patch kits and pumps, because Nexo created an airless tire to ensure they keep pedaling.

These innovative bike tires can’t get flat

They are made from polymeter blends that offer durability and a perfect balance of cushion and resilience

Users can mount them on their wheels or purchase entirely new wheel sets

Cyclists can ride these tires for up to 5,000 miles

Because they’re made from a single material, recycling becomes really easy

Are you ready to say goodbye to conventional tires?

Watch the video below for more information

Fake news may be a bad thing, but not all bad news reporting is "fake," and that distinction should be kept clear.

We tend to think of 'wire fraud' as a white collar crime perpetrated against a banking institution, but in a world with virtual currencies and online marketplace, the reality can be a bit more complex. Take the case of Anthony Clark, a 24-year-old man from Whittier, CA, who was found guilty of a conspiracy to commit wire fraud. He didn't defraud a major US bank -- he and three others mined $16 million worth of FIFA Coins from EA Sports' popular series of soccer games.

This isn't the first time there have been legal charges surrounding the EA games' digital currency -- earlier this year some popular YouTube streamers got in trouble for violating the UK Gambling Act by creating online lotteries with FIFA Coins. Compared to this hacker group's efforts, however, that was almost nothing: According to the Justice Department, Clark and his team created software that tricked EA's servers into thinking their accounts had played thousands of FIFA Soccer matches in seconds, causing the game's normally small FIFA Coin payouts to be multiplied exponentially. Over time, the group sold these ill-gotten winnings on secondary coin markets for millions.

The feds closed in on Clark and the rest last year, seizing money, cars and a house, before things ended this week when a jury convicted Clark on one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud. The rest of the group pleaded guilty earlier, and all four are currently awaiting sentencing. Check out the Justice Department's official statement for more details.

Source: Department of Justice

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The leader of a bipartisan good-government group, Zach Wamp, headed to the White House last week to ask whether President Donald Trump's "drain the swamp" slogan would ever be more than a throwaway campaign slogan. One of the president's closest aides, Steve Bannon, assured him it's a priority....

PHILADELPHIA (AP) — A Pennsylvania judge has denied Bill Cosby's latest attempt to get his sexual assault case dismissed.

Dallas Cowboys player Tony Romo has officially endorsed rookie Dak Prescott as the starting quarterback and says he is ready to accept his new role as a backup. Romo made the declaration while reading from a prepared statement at the Cowboys' facility. "He has earned the right to be our quarterback," Romo said.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Delivering at last, triumphant House Republicans voted Thursday to repeal and replace the "Obamacare" health plan they have reviled for so long, overcoming united Democratic opposition and their own deep divisions to hand a major win to President Donald Trump....

[Samy Kamkar], leet haxor extraordinaire, has taken a treasure trove of exploits and backdoors and turned it into a simple hardware device that hijacks all network traffic, enables remote access, and does it all while a machine is locked. It’s PoisonTap, and it’s based on the Raspberry Pi Zero for all that awesome tech blog cred we crave so much.

PoisonTap takes a Raspberry Pi Zero and configures it as a USB Gadget, emulating a network device. When this Pi-come-USB-to-Ethernet adapter is plugged into a computer (even a locked one), the computer sends out a DHCP request, and PoisonTap responds by telling the machine the entire IPv4 space is part of the Pi’s local network. All Internet traffic on the locked computer is then sent over PoisonTap, and if a browser is running on the locked computer, all requests are sent to this tiny exploit device.

With all network access going through PoisonTap, cookies are siphoned off, and the browser cache is poisoned with an exploit providing a WebSocket to the outside world. Even after PoisonTap is unplugged, an attacker can remotely send commands to the target computer and force the browser to execute JavaScript. From there, it’s all pretty much over.

Of course, any device designed to plug into a USB port and run a few exploits has a few limitations. PoisonTap only works if a browser is running. PoisonTap does not work on HTTPS cookies with the Secure cookie flag set. PoisonTap does not work if you have filled your USB ports with epoxy. There are a thousand limitations to PoisonTap, all of which probably don’t apply if you take PoisonTap into any office, plug it into a computer, and walk away. That is, after all, the point of this exploit.

As with all ub3r-1337 pen testing tools, we expect to see a version of PoisonTap for sale next August in the vendor area of DEF CON. Don’t buy it. A Raspberry Pi Zero costs $5, a USB OTG cable less than that, and all the code is available on Github. If you buy a device like PoisonTap, you are too technically illiterate to use it.

[Samy] has a demonstration of PoisonTap in the video below.

Filed under: Raspberry Pi, security hacks, slider

The virtual whole-Earth model that Google has been perfecting for over a decade has finally reached its next big step: Google Earth is now available in virtual reality. For the first time, users can walk through real city streets, fly through canyons and teleport to anywhere in the world all in an completely immersive VR experience.

Google Earth VR covers the entire 196.9 million square miles of the planet, so if you can't decide where where to take your first virtual trip, Google has helpfully included cinematic tours and curated destinations through places like the Amazon River, downtown Manhattan, the Grand Canyon and the ruins of Rome. While there's no Google Sky yet, you can still zoom out and fly through the edges of spaces as you look black on our virtual blue marble.

The initial release is free and available now on Steam, so users with compatible HTC Vive headsets can explore the red planet and the blue one without ever leaving their living room. According to the release notes, Google Earth will be coming to even more platforms (and presumably Google Daydream) sometime next year.

Source: Google Blog, Steam

Facebook and Google are figuring out how to handle fake news. Plus, we look at Donald Trump's conflicts of interest and James Fallows tells us about the president-elect's relationship with China. Finally, two voters in Alabama reflect on the election.

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It almost goes without saying that modern Apple devices are tough to repair or upgrade, but the Touch Bar-equipped MacBook Pro might just take the cake. An iFixit teardown of the 13-inch model reveals that there are even fewer replaceable parts than before. The solid-state drive is embedded on the motherboard (even the non-Touch Bar model has a removable card), to begin with -- whatever capacity you choose is what you'll have for the life of the system. The Touch Bar, as you might guess, isn't exactly easy to replace. And while having a fingerprint reader in the power button is very convenient for sign-ins and purchases, that also makes repairs complicated. The button is tied to a chip on the motherboard (since it needs a secure element), so you can't just slip in an aftermarket component and call it a day.

There are a few surprises. There's an unusually beefy three-microphone array, possibly to improve Siri voice commands. And curiously, the speakers on the 13-inch Touch Bar system don't actually sit underneath the grilles -- those openings are only there for the more conventional model. Instead, sound blasts out the side vents.

There are advantages to this design. It's more compact and lighter than its predecessors despite the improved performance and extra features. However, there's no denying that the new MacBook Pro represents the end of an era for Apple's pro machines. Although there weren't that many people upgrading SSDs or otherwise tinkering with previous-generation MacBook Pros, this system effectively rules that out. It's a powerful portable appliance rather than a conventional PC, and you're expected to use it as-is until you need a full-fledged replacement.

Source: iFixit

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