It's been going on for a while. Since midapril, there's been a minimum of two stories about bitcoin each and every day[1]. There was, for a while, suspicion that it was an attempt to boost interest in bitcoin, and get more people using it - astroturfing, more or less - but I'm increasingly convinced that it's just because stories about bitcoin tend to be upvoted, and it's often an interesting topic. Well, ignoring the fact that there's very little left to say about it, anyways.

[1] Based on a search for "bitcoin" on HNTrends, http://www.hntrends.dotcloud.com/

This is actually a big deal. We are testing the waters of non-government controlled currency with Bit coins so cases like this are very interesting.