I don't use trending often enough to know that I'm correct in saying this, but I get the impression that the author is describing a shift from "most star-ed projects each day" to some new algorithm which seems to resemble "most interesting projects as of late", with the later being less dynamic. I suppose that's in part why they feel less excitement and less value in the tool.

I agree that a lot of the recent changes to GH have been really cool. This article sort of makes me wish that features like the trending page were more configurable.