I wouldn't conclude that from an Intel Employee even if they did claim it because they(Intel) already lied multiple times in this afair.
But they didn't even do that, they just said desktop processors are affected, this doesn't say mobile ones are not.
Many companies have already reported that their telemetry records many crashes with the exact same symptoms and software on their laptops while AMD still isn't affected.
With very little initial work, physical media is also very convenient.
I buy a disk, put it into a specific drive, get a instant message when its ripped, check its name and put it into a folder. From there my mediabox converts it to a managable size and adds it to the collection.
Whin I turn on my TV I see all these Movies and shows neatly presented by Kodi. I have a tiny Wireless keyboard and can start any in under a second. No buffering, no adds, no matter if the router is connected, and no fear of ever loosing access.
Its great.
Exeptions are there of couse, I would love to buy The Orville, but they just don't want my money!
Because somebody has to create that media. And that person they have to live. (Or better that huge team when it comes to movies) So they have to earn money, so somebody has to pay them.
I also enjoy that today I can test if something fits me If I am skeptical. But I also always make sure to pay back creators for things I enjoy so that in the future there will be more things I enjoy.
Of course I understand anybody who can not afford media and am happy to subsidize them with the part I am paying for good shows. But if you have a Plex server, you can afford it. And If you say its close just start with things you like most and at least say "thank you" to them.
But in the details this attack is not that bad. E.g. NordVPN and I guess also other VPNs use firewall rules to drop traffic on normal network interfaces.
Their side channel is still routing traffic away from the VPN channel. Then they can observe that there is no traffic and guess that the user either didn't make requests in that moment or that he wanted to visit a website in the range covered by the route. They can not spy on the traffic.
Also you can not quickly move into a network and apply this attack, as DHCP leases usually last 1 day or at least 1 hour. Only when they expire you can apply the attack (or you force the user to drop from the network, which is easy if they are using WPA2, but only possible by blocking the wifi signal if they are using WPA3)
It is a serious issue and should be mitigated, but not as huge as news articles make it.
https://www.tomshardware.com/pc-components/cpus/dev-reports-that-intels-laptop-cpus-are-also-crashing-several-laptops-have-suffered-similar-crashes-in-testing
Mind, that this is just the company which published the initial reports that the defects in desktop CPUs are systematic, so I can see why Toms Hardware deems their Post a reliable source.