The closest replacement is The Old Reader - unfortunately they seem to having problems with feed update speed (probably due to load)
It should probably default to being locked...
One of my favorite things about Newsblur is how minutely configurable it is, but I think all of that is probably throwing off new users.
Today I see it's just (a) email address and (b) know who you are on Google. Glad to see they changed it.
They aren't charging anything, maybe they should make an app...