There have been no changes made to 'game' following the update to 5.7 on .net, barb rise and the other game settings are still available. The only changes so far as I can see are the removal of 'gm_scan', 'illegal_time' and 'block_after' (the latter two both sitting settings) and the addition of 'night'.
I don't understand how those particular settings had previously been causing problems. Just curious.
gmscan is how often the site scans for greasemonkey scripts.
In theory, you could create a script that shuts down for 1 ms on those times, or (if it only scans once) waits for the time to pass.
Where did you hear that? On my return to tw a few months back someone asked about that in our tribe on W36.net, never directly tested it myself but I think that came in a while ago. Had my suspicions it was tied into those blasted churches and the pesky issue of first churches in the build queue on ennoblement. Sledgehammer and nut springs to mind but I never got an actual answer as to what had been changed and why.