1. I initially wanted to display as little information as possbile to keep it clean and prevent clutter, but I guess it wouldn't hurt to show at least the comments count.
2. Oh, I didn't notice that. Might be caused by the way the new tab is opened. Gonna look into that, thanks.
3. Good catch, gonna change that.
4. Do mean contrast wise?
5. You're right, the spacing between paragraphs is missing. That will get fixed.
6. Yea, I will probably increase the speed of the transition to match the rest of the UI.
The modal exists for reading longer comments. It's unnecessary for most, but during testing I found quite a lot of very long comments (especially in Ask HN) that didn't fit on the screen. Scrolling directly inside the comment felt weird, so I added the modal. It also increases the text size and makes it easier to read long paragraphs.
Thank you very much for your feedback!