As this is LTT and y'all do allot of clickbait supposedly is this Intel issue really that bad or can anyone even effectively use these flaws yet?,(reply>), yet ? it affects 8 yr old cpus, what do u think ? AND for that matter did u find using ur computer less enjoyable ? No, what u dont know, cant hurt u. Now u know, ull be all over the place. Stay calm. Dont worry too much. Chances are ull be hacked so slim that even if u are u wont find out :). Wait for the patch if it makes u feel better. Thats the only thing u can do, or buy an  amd system, or build one, ur choice and u can feel safe, until they find something thats wrong with AMD, then everyone will want intel again and so on and so on.,(reply>), Nobody knows if anyone has used this in the wild already. According to the articles I've read it would be very hard, if not impossible to detect as the attacker can remove all traces of tampering. Either way, it's not good. According to Intel the patches will cause a 3% drop in performance for your average home user while data centers can see up to a 9% drop, Apple claims that they see up to a 40% drop in performance with certain workloads.