I ran into the same problem some time ago. My solution is not ideal, but it works fine. In gnome-terminal --preferences go to profile -> command, and as custom command I put open-wezterm-here. This could be the terminal you're using. Set 'when commands exits' to Exit terminal. It does show gnome-terminal for a split second. But that doesn't really bother me anymore.

I think the smashing records is referring to breaking record after record. I'm also curious about the absolute increase of users, 0.1% increase could be a lot of new users in just a month.