Spectre & Meltdown

[Ali]

> Funny,   I've been saying since the 1980s that it you have something
> that's critical to your survival, keep it offline.


Here here! I hope this is a wakeup call to all the people out there with all the unnecessary connected "lives". Forget all the social media BS but also the cloud storage, streaming everything (and not really having control of anything you "own"), IoT, and of course software as a service. As I understand it the exploits only work if run on the machine locally - which can occur if you run a malicious JavaScript through your browser.... So if you don't have to go on the internet just to run your email program to check your mail you (i.e. webmail or outlook online vs. POP/IMAP access) then you are more secure...

I've gone out of my way to make sure I buy only equipment that I can connect to directly and is not dependent on some ephemeral cloud service whenever humanly possible. It may be less convenient or more technical but at the end it is always more secure (well not always but you get the idea).

-Ali