[jrichardshaw]

To be slightly fair, the policies of the journals have a lot to do with this. I'll try and explain:

This paper was submitted to Nature as it would be fairly high profile, and Nature does now allow you to put in on the arXiv at submission, which was done in January. Since then it has been going through peer review, and being queued up to get published in the journal which finally happened on June 17th. However, during that whole time there is a press embargo. So although you may have seen it back in January, that was because a few outlets picked it up by scanning the arXiv themselves, and no one within the collaboration has been allowed to talk about it to the press, and no universities to publicise it in the intervening time. That embargo has presumably just been lifted which is why this is all coming out now.

Because of the embargo you wouldn't have seen quotes and comments from people involved in the initial coverage back in January, and even if I'd noticed it getting posted to HN back in January I would have not been allowed to comment on it like I'm doing now.