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The point Hawking was trying to make was that it is in principle possible for *all* of information that goes in to be extracted later. It would be extremely scrambled, but all of it would be there. In more technical language, the system is unitary (you might recognize this word from linear algebra). That's very far from saying that you could travel into a black hole and still make a meaningful escape. But who knows what someone will think of in 100 years...
An interesting point that most of the media neglected is that there have actually been several people in recent months besides Hawking who have shown the same thing. They all used different methods though, and I don't know that any of them on their own are very convincing. Most people for example do not agree with Hawking's particular method.
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