[$] A look at the handling of Meltdown and Spectre

The Meltdown/Spectre debacle has,deservedly, reached the mainstream press and, likely, most of the public that has even a remote interest in computersand security. It only took a day or so from the accelerated disclosuredate of January 3-it was originally scheduled forJanuary 9-before the bugs were making big headlines. But Spectre has been known for at least sixmonths and Meltdown for nearly as long-at least to some in the industry.Others that were affected were completely blindsided by theannouncements and have joined the scramble to mitigate these hardware bugsbefore they bite users. Whatever else can be said about Meltdown and Spectre,the handling (or, in truth, mishandling) of this whole incident has been ahorrific failure.