What I find the most striking about these stories is the increasing desperation on the part of what Eco would call the 'model reader'.
The degree to which these (genuine!) advances are being presented as a much-needed pick-me-up for despairing mortals, trapped, as they are, in decaying bodies on a dying planet run by whimsical billionaires, is as precise a measure as I can think of for predicting the date of the collapse/singularity.
The real story is how badly you wanted to read this story.
