Hacker News: PorterBHall

New comment by PorterBHall in "Apocalypse Early Warning System"

PorterBHall — Fri, 01 May 2026 21:00:21 +0000

Is it the end of the world or just Davos?

New comment by PorterBHall in "No One at Waffle House Remembers FEMA Official Who Says He Teleported In"

PorterBHall — Sun, 05 Apr 2026 00:13:26 +0000

I love this because it explains so much about the human mind. Rationally, it was the medication. Emotionally, it was Jesus.

New comment by PorterBHall in "Elite Overproduction"

PorterBHall — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 14:01:59 +0000

> When we ponder upon this, it boggles down to the fact that it's notoriously hard to distinguish "value creation" vs "value extraction".

This is an excellent frame to think about this. When we look at the increasing financialization of consumer spending (subscriptions, buy now pay later, rebates, club discounts, etc.), we can think of it as disguising value extraction as value creation.

New comment by PorterBHall in "Elite Overproduction"

PorterBHall — Fri, 06 Mar 2026 13:20:30 +0000

I have to wonder, too, if this partially describes why "Make America Great Again" has been such an effective slogan. The greatness that most Americans long to return to is a time where a larger middle class was able to more easily pay for health care, housing, and other needs.

New comment by PorterBHall in "Stephen Colbert going down swinging"

PorterBHall — Wed, 18 Feb 2026 17:05:53 +0000

“Plato is my friend, but truth is a better friend.”

New comment by PorterBHall in "Flock CEO calls Deflock a “terrorist organization” (2025) [video]"

PorterBHall — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 05:25:12 +0000

Terrorism is the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims.

It was a different world when you were a kid. People weren’t as incendiary in their speech.

New comment by PorterBHall in "Stochastic Terrorism"

PorterBHall — Sun, 25 Jan 2026 06:08:47 +0000

In the United States, stochastic terrorism is neither a statutory offense nor a term of art in criminal codes; it is an analytic label used in scholarship and practitioner writing to describe probabilistic risks of violence linked to rhetoric. Recent legal and critical surveys stress that usage is heterogeneous and contested, and that the concept's value lies in describing a structure of communication and harm rather than in supplying a justiciable element test.[7] By contrast, U.S. incitement law is anchored in Brandenburg v. Ohio (1969), which protects advocacy short of speech that is intended to produce imminent lawless action and likely to do so. Stochastic accounts often concern non-directive, cumulative rhetoric whose effects materialize unpredictably, making the Brandenburg imminence and likelihood prongs difficult to satisfy absent clear exhortation.[2]

New comment by PorterBHall in "Ask HN: Do you believe aliens are visiting Earth?"

PorterBHall — Tue, 02 Dec 2025 00:18:35 +0000

It’s unsettling to think that humanity has lost knowledge it once had, but it happens all the time. Anyone here know how to harness a horse to a buggy?

New comment by PorterBHall in "Why 90s Movies Feel More Alive Than Anything on Netflix"

PorterBHall — Thu, 27 Nov 2025 02:21:23 +0000

Gen Z discovers nostalgia.

New comment by PorterBHall in "MySafeSpace – Whitehouse.gov"

PorterBHall — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 15:39:23 +0000

True that a majority of the electorate voted for and should have expected this, but Presidential approval rating is in the cellar.

New comment by PorterBHall in "Powell – unlike the dotcom boom, AI spending isn't a bubble"

PorterBHall — Sat, 01 Nov 2025 20:14:18 +0000

I think your take makes sense. Thanks for laying it out. I worry about the containment aspects of this. Sure, the capex for this is coming off corporate balance sheets, but a bad event could wipe away a lot of stock market value, which would trigger a deep recession given that AI spending is really the only thing keeping our economy afloat at the moment. It feels like we’re in a doomed if we do, doomed if we don’t moment. I see breadlines in our future whether or not we achieve AGI. The only question is whether or not we’ll have to deal with some added existential risk.

New comment by PorterBHall in "New study shows plants and animals emit a visible light that expires at death"

PorterBHall — Wed, 24 Sep 2025 15:06:50 +0000

I came here with a similar thought. Given that we don't have a really precise definition of that transition from living to dead, I wonder if this could be it.

New comment by PorterBHall in "Commenters Deemed Offensive After Charlie Kirk's Death Face Consequences"

PorterBHall — Tue, 16 Sep 2025 13:59:19 +0000

Only the prices paid by my side are unfair or absurd. The prices paid by their side are justified.

Meanwhile the lines dividing us become deeper and wider.

New comment by PorterBHall in "Porn censorship is going to destroy the internet"

PorterBHall — Wed, 20 Aug 2025 15:33:46 +0000

Wedge issues, deployed by both political parties, do exactly this.

Wealthy donors express their political desires by funding politicians who become dependent on their continued financial support.

The voter gets just enough small wins on these wedge issues to keep them somewhat happy. The wealthy preserves the status quo since that’s how they became wealthy in the first place. Our democracy ossifies in the face of new challenges.

If voters across the spectrum viewed campaign finance reform as a key issue, we might have some hope in changing things.

New comment by PorterBHall in "Photographer spends years on street corner capturing same commuters daily (2017)"

PorterBHall — Thu, 07 Aug 2025 14:49:13 +0000

I live in a somewhat small community (~25k) and I commuted into the city on public transportation for about 15 years. 10 years ago, I started working from home full-time.

I often see the people I used to commute with around town. I recognize them and remember them, but I’ve never had any interactions with them.

When I see them, I’m surprised by how much older they look. Then I realize I must look older to them.

New comment by PorterBHall in "23andMe is out of bankruptcy and it still hasn’t substantially changed its ways"

PorterBHall — Sat, 19 Jul 2025 16:27:48 +0000

Currently, due to the Affordable Care Act aka Obamacare, health insurance companies are prohibited from setting rates based on individual risk (except they can charge higher premiums to tobacco users). Before the law, ensures would typically put applicants through a health screening that would determine their rate. People with pre-existing medical conditions could be denied coverage or charged higher rates. Women routinely paid higher premiums than men.

New comment by PorterBHall in "Swarms of robots could go up your nose, melt the mucus and clean your sinuses"

PorterBHall — Sat, 28 Jun 2025 13:56:25 +0000

I'm a nope for space flights. I'm a nope to time travel. I'm a nope for snorting nanobots.

I guess I'm just too 20th century for all that stuff.

New comment by PorterBHall in "Whether having a baby ruins your life or not"

PorterBHall — Tue, 10 Jun 2025 15:32:13 +0000

Fair point. We _currently_ exist in a time of choice, but that is only due to the recent availability of effective birth control methods. Some choose to do it the old fashioned way and let the fates decide when and if they become parents.

New comment by PorterBHall in "Whether having a baby ruins your life or not"

PorterBHall — Mon, 09 Jun 2025 15:46:37 +0000

Personally, becoming a dad was the single best thing that ever happened to me. I haven’t loved every minute of it, but it added abundant love and purpose to my life and gave me what I didn’t know I needed. My only regret is that I didn’t do it sooner.

But I’ve been lucky in this regard. I was deeply conflicted going into it. But all of that doubt left me the moment I first held him in my arms. I don’t know if circumstances were different whether I would’ve had the same experience.

And the scariest part about becoming a parent is that there’s no way for you to try it out. I had been an uncle for decades before becoming a parent. Those experiences are not the same.

The choice to become a parent, or to not become a parent, is one of those choices in life that requires a leap of faith. There’s no way to explore the counter factual.

But, for those of you on the fence, let me say this. We all come from a long line of parents. I believe that there are certain rewards placed in our brain by evolution that are only unlocked by becoming a parent. Nothing can help you understand your parents and the love you did or didn’t receive from them quite like loving your own child.

New comment by PorterBHall in "ChatGPT Helps Students Feign ADHD: An Analogue Study on AI-Assisted Coaching"

PorterBHall — Tue, 20 May 2025 20:14:47 +0000

I read only as far as the abstract. What would motivate an adult to feign ADHD symptoms? Is it access to prescription drugs? Disability benefits?