The design is different, but I wouldn't say it's worse than github. I actually prefer sourcehut's design to github's. If nothing else, there are some undeniable benefits to sourcehut's style, such as faster page loading time and less memory usage.

How would your criticism change if you knew who you were talking to? Why not just always assume the developer of anything will be reading HN comments that mention their thing, and form your comments as such? Developers are human, after all.