Noticed the last few days, user titles and stars gone when reading threads from this site. Permanent change? Harbinger of things to come? Or am I out to lunch?
Must say, I kind of miss them.

They were removed permanently.
Yes, some minor visual changes have been made to the Community Forums recently:
Quote: - normalized non-staff group images (now CSS)
- removed user ranks
- hidden user titles in the post view
- added a more clear separation of signatures from posts (margins, border, font size, aligned to right by default)