I'm not a regular reader of daringfireball, but that blog post is very long on speculation and decidedly short on facts. It's random chance whether any of the resolutions, dimensions, weights, or features he settles on wind up proving to the true. This is firmly in the "Bluray support will be native in the next version of OSX!" sort of speculation.
First of all - it's mostly a speculative piece - that's the point of that article. The post is a sequel to http://daringfireball.net/2012/07/this_ipad_mini_thing. Second, if you read through the first article - you'll see that he tries to justify his speculation based on some design principles that were laid down in the HCI guidelines for the iPad. He does mention where his "cupertino birds" have given him some hints though.
I don't believe there have been any assessments of the next generation iPad anywhere on the internet that have been this justified with rationale provided, or have carefully sourced all the other writers that contributed to his thinking.
I've started to read DF posts like this with the mindset that he has some inside information. It is very short on facts, but the logic seems mostly sound. Unfortunately it comes across to me as a "I have 75% of the info, I need to create 100% of the story" kind of piece.
It's exactly that sort of piece but that's actually why I read Daring Fireball.
Gruber obviously comes from a very specific position when it comes to certain things, but whatever you think about him he's someone who watches Apple very closely and has done for some time.
With someone like Apple where 100% of the information isn't out there, if I'm going to read speculation then I'd rather read Gruber's speculation than most because he's far better equipped to try and fill in the gaps.
His arguments make sense, especially when following Apples product history. I like the smaller bezel, makes it very handy and I hope it's as thin too. Looks like a very promising product.
