Apparently the pictures are also not allowed to be used within a non-commercial context.

Taking into consideration that most of them cover public figures I don't see any use of them except for a journalistic context. And unless someone needs them in poster format it should be covered by the same rights that allow Google to show preview images in their image search.

So I'd say overall pretty much useless and just a PR story for Wired Mag.

I think you got that backwards. You are allowed to use the images in a non commercial or editorial context. You can't use them in a commercial context. I thought they made that pretty clear.

The images are licenced BY-NC, which means they can't be used commerically. So you probably couldn't include them, at all, in your commerical magazine, say/

That was my understanding of cc-nc as well, but the linked announcement specifically says they're okay to use in an editorial context in any publication

Yup. The only three CC-licenses that are allowed are CC-BY, CC-BY-SA and CC-ZERO (public domain).