You're right, for the layman it's a pretty boring announcement, but that's how Linus has always done all releases so for people who know, it's not a surprise.

You're right, for the layman it's a pretty boring announcement, but that's how Linus has always done all releases so for people who know, it's not a surprise. The Linux development ecosystem is extremely tightknit with a lot of people working on various different things, and unless you're using the Kernel for a specific thing, then yeah - none of the logs, shortlogs and release files are going to make any sense, because for the most part - they don't make any sense for anyone who isn't specifically using that part of the Kernel personally.