Jacob Maltz of SA got back to me as I had the same questions. His response:

“Recent articles, within 10 days of publication are free to access”

That said, I’m seeing the “Comments have been disabled” on newer than 10 day articles, including a news posting from Jan 28.

I understand SA want to monetize the site more. For me, $350 I’m subscription costs /year is too much. 

This could have a chilling effect on authors who have relied on the page views for article compensation. Perhaps SA has rolled out another method of compensation for them. Haven’t checked that yet.

Ha...the script converted back to normal. Please check current  BlackBerry articles and you will see what I mean. Think certain formatting like commas and quotes are being expressed in html script in the comments sections.