Instapundit seems to be a lot more skeptical than some reporters are. Follow the story to a guy who seems to have stumbled across a way to make hydrogen using a radio frequency generator. I’m not an expert in this area, but I do think this is possible. There’s already a patent on it, actually. The problem is that it’s not revolutionary. The radio frequency generator will consume more energy than is released by burning hydrogen. This article suggests that the efficiency is around 76% of ideal, which is less, I’m fairly certain, than conventional electrolysis methods, which are more like 80%.
Thermodynamics is a real bummer. It will always demand that you use more energy breaking the hydrogen/oxygen bond than you’ll get out of burning it. I’m sure someday someone will make a fool of us all by figuring out to convert matter directly into energy, but when one sees inventions like this, the conventional laws of physics will apply. There’s no such thing as free energy.