Hawking was asked a couple years ago for his big 7-0 what his biggest blunder was and said it was the idea that black holes destroyed information. That wasn't surprising when he said it, 2 years ago, either. Unless he had another bet, the 'lost bet' was the one with Thorne and Preskill about information destruction, made in the mid 90's, that he publicly conceded in 2004

The 'big new thing' is Hawking's has come out with a possible solution to the Firewall Paradox, and it's big because the Media adores Hawking and routinely reports commentary by him as new and genius even when he was repeating something well known in the field like with SETI/METI a while back. The firewall paradox of black holes is a real headscratcher and Hawking really is the Grand Old Man of black holes and rightly so, but this article really didn't say a damn thing about the matter and your summary of it was to note his 2 year old commentary on a decade old error. WTF?