Am waiting on a new HN submission, "Tell HN: My husband needs to get off of HN and start working so I don't have to pick up after his sorry ass, and BTW- I don't need your help. I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself."
It looks good to me. If it were designed by lawyers, unless they were designers, I think it would look like crap. The corners are still rounded and I think the other changes aren't that bad.
The problem is not overpriced conferences. The problems are that employers don't want to shell out $2000/year because it seems like a hefty pricetag, conferences are just of often as not not well-enough organized and operated, and sponsors put off more people than they sell to when they do the hard sell.
The ways to fix that are: 1. conferences should instead do a subscription model where you join up for $2000/year and you go to as many conferences as you want (but you have to pay the hotel fee + maybe another $100 or so to keep the riffraff out), 2. if conferences happened more often, the kinks would be worked out, 3. sponsors: give away product and then stay the hell out of it- you'll get the exposure x 10.