Yeah, I heard that as well, and Microsoft would find it pretty hard to talk its way out of that when the world knows how aggressive it got when trying to push Win 10 on just about every Windows user who hadn't already upgraded.

Then there's Microsoft's non-support for older CPUs in Windows 10.... another way of forcing people to upgrade.

you are not done with this round of patching until you've got the microcode update via bios. (not yet released for most things)

there's a game company which blames meltdown/spectre for its problems. but they aren't home users like most of us.

https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/forums/news/announcements/132642-epic-services-stability-update

--

fun thing.. the win patch borked some old amd machines

https://www.techrepublic.com/article/emergency-windows-meltdown-patch-locks-some-amd-pcs-into-endless-loop/

Next time use one of my special chips... My abacu-chip. Unhackable.

You can even play backgammon on it. Cool. 

For those with AMD cpu's 

http://www.firstpost.com/tech/news-analysis/microsoft-halts-security-updates-for-certain-amd-machines-after-meltdown-and-spectre-patches-cause-issues-4295321.html 

And here

https://www.engadget.com/2018/01/09/microsoft-halts-meltdown-spectre-amd-patches/?sr_source=Twitter 

 And this for Anti virus https://doublepulsar.com/important-information-about-microsoft-meltdown-cpu-security-fixes-antivirus-vendors-and-you-a852ba0292ec 

Thanks for the link Al. There's a handy little spreadsheet linked within there that summarizes antivirus status.  It's about a third of the way down, a tiny link, and easy to miss so I'll link it here

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/184wcDt9I9TUNFFbsAVLpzAtckQxYiuirADzf3cL42FQ/htmlview?usp=sharing&sle=true

... until you visit a website which has been compromised.

Remember those adverts that had iffy content that were distributed via an agency to some fairly reputable websites:- https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/476193/page/1

Or download/install something that's been infected, eg https://forums.sinsofasolarempire.com/485055/page/1

Then, in theory, this could be exploited.

From what I've seen the circus has begun, people stating about a 1% hit to consumers oriented in gaming and a bigger hit to data centers, one of which was Fortnite blaming their weekend downtime on the bug.

Now if some of the knee jerk reactions are true, it's the x86 architecture that's at fault here and people are talking about moving more towards a variant of RISC/CISC or even pressuring Intel to drop x86 and open up the AMD64 instruction set on their processors to a form of open source flashing <this is both scary and awesome as hell at the same time>.

This was the update that was sent out on the 4th KB4056892. I use Windows Defender so that's why it installed.

I asked over on techspot how vulnerable we really are and this sums up what I really wanted to know..

Do you believe you will be targeted and infected?

- Meltdown has low prevalence and if you have safe habits, update your OS regularly and use a decent security soft; chances you get compromised are very low.
- Spectre is too complicated to setup, need physical access to your motherboard, you won't be hit by it.

If you are not hurry you can wait a bit before purchasing any cpu and wait fixed versions. However since the issue, actual cpu's prices went down a lot. .

It is your choice. " src="https://www.techspot.com/images/icons/new/prekesh-happy.png" alt="" />

What sums up what you really wanted to know, cos I'm not seeing anything?

Evidently, the full effect of the patches won't be known until the BIOS patch becomes available and is applied.  And then I'm wondering if the I/O operations are going to be most affected, what does the combination of patches do to uploading and downloading, particularly with larger files?  Things like skin uploads and downloads would probably be only minimally affected, but what about driver/firmware downloads from Nvidia, for example?  Some of those can reach up to 140GB and more.

Somebody please correct me if I'm wrong, but as I understand this, it won't matter how fast your internet is, I/O operations, uploads and downloads will be slowed.  Is that right?  If so, then the impact of this may be greater than was first revealed.

I suspect network latency will still be orders of magnitude greater than the overhead of these patches on context switches (as the CPU swaps between user and kernel mode).

It not so much how much I/O happens but how many system calls a program makes to the OS that is a factor. Eg if some dumb program read/wrote (or sent/received) a large file one byte at-a-time then these patches would really hurt it's (already not very good) performance.

Ok it's the patch, not the vulnerability that will slow things down. Now as far as bits per second over the network that doesn't matter. Information will still transfer 100 gigabits per second for me. What will slow down is the computer itself not the network. As far as network the speed is whichever is the slowest computer involved. What we are talking is the computer if i'm understanding this do to the patch you processor will slow down 17-27%, and your ssd drive anywhere between 8-40 percent depending on what it is doing, and the brand of ssd drive. 

That's what I've been trying to say, the performance hit, on even home user PCs , will be greater than first revealed by Intel or Microsoft.  Yeah, we are told this is the way of the world, with hackers seemingly allowed to run rampant to do as they please, but does it really need to be this way?    Surely these big tech companies have the resources and know-how to to combat these threats even before they emerge... like be proactive so that users can be 100% safe in using the products they spend big money on.

this is getting more and more screwed up.... still haven't got microcode/bios update for my motherboard (z170 based)... and now linux distros are reverting the microcode fixes (redhat, ubuntu, mint)

According to what I read, Intel is now saying not to install the patches is has released as they cause more frequent reboots.  Intel is currently working with its partners to release updated patches since identifying the rebooting issue, so that may be why you've not yet received your microcode/BIOS update.

could well be... but more reboots is kinda meaningless? i could understand that to be a problem for data centres and servers... but home users? i'm assuming reboot means os prompting you to reboot (or increasing the frequency of scheduled reboots in them big boys) rather than kaboom and rebooting your machine all by itself

just goes to show how unorganised/rushed the whole thing is, regardless of whether the info embargo was prematurely breeched.