[$] Meltdown and Spectre mitigations — a February update

The initial panic over the Meltdown and Spectre processor vulnerabilitieshas faded, and work on mitigations in the kernel has slowed since our mid-January report. That work has notstopped, though. Fully equipping the kernel to protect systems from thesevulnerabilities is a task that may well require years. Read on for anupdate on the current status of that work.