Freshly Exhumed writes: An intentional kernel change in Linux kernel 4.20 for enhanced Spectre mitigation is unfortunately causing Intel Linux performance to be much slower than with 4.19. That change is 'STIBP' (Single Thread Indirect Branch Predictors), which allows for preventing cross-hyperthread control of decisions that are made by indirect branch predictors. It affects Intel systems that have up-to-date microcode and CPU Hyper Threading enabled. Phoronix gives the evidence.

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India's ruling BJP party is accused of exploiting a court decision to allow women into temple for political mileage.

California's devastating wildfires are causing unhealthy air conditions for locals breathing in harmful fumes. From a report: In San Francisco, which currently has the second-worst-rated air quality out of any city in the world, one driver was spotted selling N95 respirator masks for $5 apiece. That's significantly above market rate. Right now you can buy a 10-pack of similar masks for about $13 on Amazon. But considering the masks are sold out at many local stores, riders may be willing to dish out the cash for immediate access to the protective gear. Further reading: California needs to reinvent its fire policies, or the death and destruction will go on.

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Same-sex marriage, private ownership and presidential term limits are all under consideration on the Caribbean island.

Draft UK-EU Brexit deal sparks political turmoil in Britain, with Prime Minister Theresa May assailed from all sides.

Thu-Huong Ha, writing for Quartz: Amazon's power in books extends way beyond its ability to sell them super cheap and super fast. This year, a little over 40% of the print books sold in the US moved through the site, according to estimates from Bookstat, which tracks US online book retail. (NPD, which tracks 85% of US trade print sales, declined to provide data broken out by retailer.) In the US, Amazon dominates ebook sales and hosts hundreds of thousands of self-published ebooks on its platforms, many exclusively. It looms over the audiobook scene, in retail as well as production, and is one of the biggest marketplaces for used books in the US. Amazon also makes its own books -- more than 1,500 last year. All that power comes with great data, which Amazon's publishing arm is well positioned to exploit in the interest of making books tailored exactly to what people want -- down to which page characters should meet on or how many lines of dialogue they should exchange. Though Amazon declined to comment specifically on whether it uses data to shape or determine the content of its own books, the company acknowledged that authors are recruited for their past sales (as is common in traditional publishing). "Amazon Publishing titles are thoughtfully acquired by our team -- made up of publishing-industry veterans and long-time Amazonians -- with many factors taken into consideration," says Amazon Publishing publisher Mikyla Bruder, "including the acquiring editor's enthusiasm, the strength of the story, quality of the writing, editorial fit for our list, and author backlist/comparable titles' sales track." Amazon's Kindle e-reader, first released in 2007, is a data-collection device that doubles as reading material. Kindle knows the minutiae of how people read: what they highlight, the fonts they prefer, where in a book they lose interest, what kind of books they finish quickly, and which books gets skimmed rather than read all the way through. A year after the Kindle came out, Amazon acquired Audible. Audiobooks have been a rare bright spot in the publishing industry, with double-digit growth in total sales for the past few years. Audible now touts itself as the "world's largest seller and producer of downloadable audiobooks and other spoken-word entertainment," and its site has around 450,000 audio programs.

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An extensive testing session carried out by bank security experts at Positive Technologies has revealed that most ATMs can be hacked in under 20 minutes, and even less, in certain types of attacks. From a report: Experts tested ATMs from NCR, Diebold Nixdorf, and GRGBanking, and detailed their findings in a 22-page report published this week. The attacks they tried are the typical types of exploits and tricks used by cyber-criminals seeking to obtain money from the ATM safe or to copy the details of users' bank cards (also known as skimming). Experts said that 85 percent of the ATMs they tested allowed an attacker access to the network. The research team did this by either unplugging and tapping into Ethernet cables, or by spoofing wireless connections or devices to which the ATM usually connected to. Researchers said that 27 percent of the tested ATMs were vulnerable to having their processing center communications spoofed, while 58 percent of tested ATMs had vulnerabilities in their network components or services that could be exploited to control the ATM remotely.

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Turkish media says another audio recording proves the killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi was planned.

Over a million children under five suffered from severe malnutrition in six worst-hit countries in the Sahel.

Oil flows from Kirkuk begin after Baghdad and Erbil agree on deal to export 50,000 to 100,000 barrels of oil per day.

US president tells reporters he 'very easily' answered questions for Special Counsel Mueller's Russia probe.

Mark Wilson writes: Ads in your inbox. Sounds like something you'd expect from the likes of Google or Yahoo, but Microsoft appears to be about to get in on the act as well. And we're not talking about online ads in your Outlook.com account -- we're talking about ads in the Mail app that's included with Windows 10. A new report says that Microsoft is currently testing ads with Windows Insiders, so it could be just a matter of time before they spread wider. In a support page, spotted first by news outlet Thurrott, Microsoft says, "Consistent with consumer email apps and services like Outlook.com, Gmail, and Yahoo Mail, advertising allows us to provide, support, and improve some of our products. We're always experimenting with new features and experiences. Currently, we have a pilot running in Brazil, Canada, Australia, and India to get user feedback on ads in Mail."

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Earlier this week, Google announced it is bringing business messaging to Maps, the latest in a myriad of features it has introduced to its mapping platform in recent months. A business that wants to participate will need to use Google's "My Business" verification system and its associated app to send and receive messages. While that could prove useful to a number of businesses and customers, it has raised a concern as well. From a report: But that leads me to my third feeling: what the heck is going on with Google Maps? It is becoming overburdened with so many features and design changes that it's becoming harder and harder to just get directions in it. There's Group Planning, there's a social-esque "follow" button for local businesses, you can share your ETA, there's a redesigned "Explore" section, and there's almost no way to get the damn thing to show you a cross street near your destination without three full minutes of desperate pinching and zooming and re-zooming. It's becoming bloated, is what I'm saying. It's Google's equivalent of Big Blue, as Facebook nicknames its flagship app that does a thousand things across countless strange nooks and crannies. It's as though Google wants to kill off Yelp once and for all, but can't let anybody notice how hard it's trying to do that so it just slow rolls those things into Google Maps instead.

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In damning report, UN envoy accuses UK government of 'denial' over widespread social implications of fiscal programme.

A database which contained millions of text messages used to authenticate users signing into websites was left exposed to the internet without a password. From the report: The exposed server belongs to Voxox (formerly Telcentris), a San Diego, Calif.-based communications company. The server wasn't protected with a password, allowing anyone who knew where to look to peek in and snoop on a near-real-time stream of text messages. For Sebastien Kaul, a Berlin-based security researcher, it didn't take long to find. Although Kaul found the exposed server on Shodan, a search engine for publicly available devices and databases, it was also attached to to one of Voxox's own subdomains. Worse, the database -- running on Amazon's Elasticsearch -- was configured with a Kibana front-end, making the data within easily readable, browsable and searchable for names, cell numbers and the contents of the text messages themselves.

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