I may have built too many websites to be able to have a casual opinion, buut I find the card versions in the example much quicker to scan. The changed versions would need a lot more padding than the card example to give the same effect of the information being unrelated to each other, and in the process lose the density argument.
Conceptually to me it's a bit like framed art in a gallery, the frame is a "consider this on it's own" signal, inviting me to not try to hold everything else in the room in my head simultaneously just in case it's relevant.
My personal preference for power user interfaces wrt to the issues in the article is to still have hierarchical design with cards etc for scanning, but with less padding, smaller fonts etc. Non interface web design is a different creature entirely, and arguably information density tends to be a lot less relevant on those vs other aspects like typographic choices and copywriting.
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