Sure. I had Meltdown specifically on the brain when I wrote that, sorry. It hardly needs saying that the preconditions for Spectre-like attacks being around for

Sure. I had Meltdown specifically on the brain when I wrote that, sorry. It hardly needs saying that the preconditions for Spectre-like attacks being around for several decades doesn't make the situation any less embarrassing. (That said, I don't know whether things like eg. increasing pipeline depths only made actual attacks feasible relatively recently.)