Author (submitter, really) and comments are the last two things I care about.

Yes, the nice thing about HN is the de-emphasis of the submitter...the content should stand on its own, not on the authority of whoever submitted it.

Number of upvotes is also irrelevant to emphasize. This attribute is inherently reflected in the vertical position of the item.

Edit: oops, OP did not emphasize upvotes. I'm ambivalent about holding number of comments...again, the number of them can mean several conflicting things