The news about Spectre and Meltdown may have slowed, but that does not mean the work is over. Linux kernel developers are continuing to improve their patches to mitigate these issues while also trying to recover some lost CPU performance as a result of these fixes. Intel is also working on modifying their CPU architecture so that these issues can be fixed on a hardware level, and those new chips are expected to be released later this year. Just because the hyped is over it does not mean that we as users are out of the woods yet.
http://www.zdnet.com/article/linux-4-15-good-news-and-bad-news-about-meltdown-and-spectre/