Real headline: 400M machines have unpatchable hardware bugs caused by Intel's incompetence that have to be destroyed/removed from prod before the end of their intended lifespan; Microsoft considers it a liability to keep those machines in use.
There's absolutely no reason why the company that still maintains backwards compatibility for Windows 9x software can't support hardware from 2015.
If there are software workarounds that can prolong the use of that hardware, even at the cost of performance, they should be liable (and maybe subsidized) to implement them.
Afaik it's mostly about TPM 2.0 and virtualization support.
If people are happy or stuck with their fully working machines, it should not be up to Microsoft to arbitrarily turn them into e-waste.
I do hope they do offer a practical path here, but I disagree that they should be able to be forced to do so.
Users who are happy with those machines can continue to use them as-agreed.
Spectre and meltdown, while academically intriguing, don't really matter in practice for consumer devices.
Every kernel I have booted has had mitigations=off.
https://www.theregister.com/2021/06/28/microsoft_windows_11_...
So there may be a good # of systems lacking that but otherwise fully functional.
CPU bugs or vulnerabilities hardly ever prevent running a newer OS. Never mind that those may have been patched or mitigated in the meantime by BIOS or microcode updates.
So imho this is just forced upgrading (as usual). "Buy new PC, get new OS". Hopefully this crap drives more users to Linux or *BSD.