Sorting is not a niche topic. Anybody who majored in CS (which is a ton of people these days) will read the abstract and most of the paper thinking "Wow, I can't believe they discovered something better than O(N log N)" because that's usually what people mean when they say "better sorting algorithm". What they discovered here is effectively a new compiler optimization. They should present it as such instead of calling it a new sorting algorithm.
But ya, discovering a new compiler optimization automatically is kinda cool.
I hope people majoring in CS will not think that, as they learned that n log n is the theorically best complexity for a sort algorithm. They will rather think that they found an algorithm with better constants in front of n log n.
But ya, discovering a new compiler optimization automatically is kinda cool.