I had a quick look at the design when they released it, and it didn't move me much, but I'm a developer in background, not a designer, so I rarely pay attention to my opinion of pretties
I think the premium content stuff is a good move on their part as I get the impression that Rand has paid attention to community commentary of 'why would an
SEO work for someone else??'
I don't see these annoyances on the site because unless I want to leave a comment (and I haven't had anything to say recently) I rarely visit - I just read the feed.
Actually, thinking about it, I have been avoiding the feed recently. Something about SEOMoz has been annoying me... I don't know what it is. I'll have to think about that. I don't like it when my subconscious is trying to send me a mesage and I'm not listening