This is probably the best technical description of the newly-discovered security problem in Intel chips ('newly discovered' in this case meaning 'discovered in November'). The problem has to do with the "speculative execution" of code by the chips (for example, in an expression "If A then B", the expression B will be evaluated only if the expression A is true, but the chip might begin executing B even before it knows that A is true, storing the data in a cache, just in case). Meanwhile, how did Intel's CEO respond to the news? By selling stock before it leaked to the public. Meanwhile the patches to fix the flaw are expected to slow computers by as much as 30%. More individual users won't feel the impact so much but cloud server farms are expected to be impacted
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