Ask HN: Do online press releases still make sense?

Back in the day it used to be common practice to issue a press release on sites like prweb.com when launching a new product. As far as I understood, for SEO purposes since Panda 4.0 that doesn't help anymore. And it's been long since I've seen a blog post referencing a press release. Is it still worth it? is being featured in NH or TechCrunch there only good option left for a successful launch?