also weird
Also, this is clearly silly:
"Via Twitter, Francis Wolinski, a data scientist with Paris-based Blueprint Strategy, noted that Python slowed significantly (about 37 per cent) after applying the Meltdown patch for Windows 7."
Python is a *programming language*. (OK, it can also mean a particular interpreter for that language, but it makes no practical difference; the performance characteristics of the interpreter depend on the code it's interpreting). You can write something in it that does a lot of syscalls, or something that does very few syscalls. It makes no sense to suggest that "Python", as a single thing, can be slowed down by a single amount by these changes.
Also weird, the graph claimed to be "An example AWS CPU utilization spike after installing CPU flaw" - the change described as a 'spike' (which, uh, isn't a spike) appears to be on 2017-12-22, which is two weeks before all this stuff came out. I haven't seen any suggestion that Amazon was patching AWS in December. Also, the change doesn't look at all like something you'd expect to be caused by the Meltdown patch: it seems like the instance suddenly started "idling" at about 59% CPU usage for some reason, instead of idling close to 0%. I've no idea what'd cause that, but it doesn't seem to match the characteristics ascribed to the Meltdown fix at all.
Biting the hand that feeds IT
