Proper way to fix an hardware bug like this, is that newer cpu gets protected by default, and they answer they are when queried.
So you can ask the CPU "what's your status on bug X" and the cpu answers "i'm good, you don't need to do anything" (newer fixed chips), or "i know about it but was already built, and need microcode update/special behavior to protect myself" (current chips with microcode update), "no answer / I'm not good" (old chips without update).
So new stuff is protected, and you add more protection (and slowdowns, and special stuff) for older chips that don't know how to deal with it.
What Intel is trying to do here, is to go the other way: the chips, even the new ones, will stay vulnerable by default, and when queried they say "I have a fix but I don't use it, you can enable it by asking !" and the kernel is supposed to enable it.
It's terrible for a lot of reasons, like "boot an older os and it's vulnerable since it doesn't know to call this", "additional code to enable this feature has to run for all of eternity for new chips now, instead of having to run for older chips and being phased out over time", etc ...
The reason why Intel does that seems obvious: by default the chip does not lose speed since the fix is not enabled, and so instead of "intel chips lose 30% speed over night because of a flaw" it becomes "intel adds a special security mode that protects you even more for critical applications, at the cost of some speed".
Purely marketing speech and decision at the cost of proper engineering decisions, and they need and try to get OSes like Linux to play along.
That's what he means by "[it] shows intel had no intention of fixing those flaws".
Additionally there seems to be a second issue in that the quality and behavior of the patches they submitted are trying to hide this deceptively simple but technically terrible behavior by making it look/sound obtuse and complicated.
In other words, intel is using its presence and weight to try and push a shitty solution, but one that is better for them marketing wise. Linus is flabbergasted to be treated like an idiot or a obedient drone that should apply such obvious abusive patches.
I once worked on a Finance project which had grand aspirations and decided it was going to Do Things Right by starting with extensive specifications.
The developers insisted on all behaviour being specified and documented before they would start coding. Of course, a truly exacting specification is equivalent to code. So the users who had been tasked with describing the required functionality ended up inventing their own DSL and “coding” the entire system in Microsoft Word.
Needless to say, they were the only ones who understood the spec. IT cried foul. Business cried “this is what you asked for!”
Cue months of arguments over what constituted a proper spec, during which the users essentially taught themselves how to code. The software eventually ended up being written by transliterating the DSL into actual code.
It worked, but remains to this day an unmaintainable mess.
Proper way to fix an hardware bug like this, is that newer cpu gets protected by default, and they answer they are when queried.
So you can ask the CPU "what's your status on bug X" and the cpu answers "i'm good, you don't need to do anything" (newer fixed chips), or "i know about it but was already built, and need microcode update/special behavior to protect myself" (current chips with microcode update), "no answer / I'm not good" (old chips without update).
So new stuff is protected, and you add more protection (and slowdowns, and special stuff) for older chips that don't know how to deal with it.
What Intel is trying to do here, is to go the other way: the chips, even the new ones, will stay vulnerable by default, and when queried they say "I have a fix but I don't use it, you can enable it by asking !" and the kernel is supposed to enable it.
It's terrible for a lot of reasons, like "boot an older os and it's vulnerable since it doesn't know to call this", "additional code to enable this feature has to run for all of eternity for new chips now, instead of having to run for older chips and being phased out over time", etc ...
The reason why Intel does that seems obvious: by default the chip does not lose speed since the fix is not enabled, and so instead of "intel chips lose 30% speed over night because of a flaw" it becomes "intel adds a special security mode that protects you even more for critical applications, at the cost of some speed". Purely marketing speech and decision at the cost of proper engineering decisions, and they need and try to get OSes like Linux to play along. That's what he means by "[it] shows intel had no intention of fixing those flaws".
Additionally there seems to be a second issue in that the quality and behavior of the patches they submitted are trying to hide this deceptively simple but technically terrible behavior by making it look/sound obtuse and complicated.
In other words, intel is using its presence and weight to try and push a shitty solution, but one that is better for them marketing wise. Linus is flabbergasted to be treated like an idiot or a obedient drone that should apply such obvious abusive patches.