It's not just #Spectre and #Meltdown — dozens of similar CPU bugs have been discovered since 2018, and they're still being found:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transient_execution_CPU_vulnerability

The foundations of modern computing are ricketier than we like to imagine.

In the past, I've always bought a decent computer and held on to it for years and years: it saves money and it's the green thing you do. My main machine right now is seven years old and still going strong. Updating the OS and apps is no problem — I run #Linux. But #CPU bugs make me wonder whether I should replace computers more often for security reasons. I really hope not.

@CppGuy I'd also worry whether more recent CPUs have more (and not yet widely known and mitigated) flaws, too - maybe we all need to use 5yo CPUs but keep upgrading whenever they reach 7yo!

@kitten_tech

I don't know. A lot of the bugs on that list apply to CPUs that were several years when the bugs were found.

To make things more complex, software mitigations often hurt performance, so a given PC now gets slower over time, even before we account for code-bloat.

@CppGuy sure, but what bugs have yet to be found in the LATEST chips? 🤷

I reckon x86 CPUs are so complex they've crossed the event horizon of always-gonna-be-buggy, and ARM probably isn't far behind. Dunno about RISCV though...