That does not address the stupid embargo on involved linux developers to speak about it to each other.
FWIW, I don't think PR had anything to do with this. Without arguing the merits of embargoes, the goal of them is to give the good guys a head start before the bad guys. But, if you tell too many good guys, the assumption is that the bad guys find out. So, you try to tell as few good guys as possible.
This was (from my blatantly biased perspective) an honest, but imperfect attempt at keeping the bad guys from finding out. A lot of lessons have been learned since this, and the group of good guys involved in recent issues has been much more comprehensive than with the original Spectre/Meltdown bits. I think Greg was alluding to this when he said "Intel has gotten better at this."
People actually admitting fault/guilt, publicly, means that heads are getting chopped off.
If you want to see companies' behavior change, we have to change our entire model on what "economic performance" means, and whether it's even something worth pursuing above all else.
Some misbehaviours result in PR disasters, but for whatever reason, no-one ever calls-out a company specifically for putting PR over customers' interests.
I'm biased, of course. But, I think things are much better now. We have ways of having relatively "normal" conversations about these things where a broad set of community folks are involved. It's not perfect, but it's way better than it was a year ago.
The embargo was really painful to work with, even for folks like myself who were inside Intel during the whole thing. I'm used to being able to ask folks for help and to lean on the incredible knowledge of the kernel community. For Meltdown, I was much more on my own than I was comfortable with. It wasn't fun.