lmartel's comments

lmartel | 4 years ago | on: FDA Moves to Ban All Menthol Cigarettes and Flavored Cigars

You can make the opposite point with the same logic though: "the powerful, dangerous tobacco industry was given a loophole in the flavored cigarette ban allowing them to prey disproportionately on vulnerable Black populations."

lmartel | 6 years ago | on: How to get your money back on a non-refundable hotel

Nonrefundable rates are not marketed as a bet against global catastrophe. They're a commitment that you won't change your mind.

This epidemic is more similar to the hotel burning down. I would expect my money back in that scenario and do whatever I could to retrieve it.

lmartel | 6 years ago | on: Why you can't get cell service on the tarmac

Cell service isn't for yapping anymore, it's for scrolling!

lmartel | 6 years ago | on: Ask HN: We are shutting down our startup, I get our code. What now?

Assuming it's an entirely separate venture, sure.

But from the OP it sounds like the cofounder might be continuing in the same line of business, but wants to "pivot" and jettison the now-dead weight of the technologist.

If this is the case it seems plausible that his contributions and R&D are still relevant, even if they're throwing out his code, and so perhaps he's entitled to whatever stake he vested over those first two years.

lmartel | 6 years ago | on: Show HN: I built a podcast app that skips over the ads

I agree completely. My favorite podcasts are crowd-funded with no ads, but the least-bad approach to ad reads is when someone reads a script, verbatim, in a bored monotone. Especially when it's not one of the hosts reading, but a producer whose voice you don't recognize and implicitly trust. But this is really rare.

lmartel | 7 years ago | on: Uber executive resigns following probe into racial discrimination

Couldn't you criticize the parent comment for exactly the same reason? Someone posted "I liked her" and someone else posted "well I didn't."

lmartel | 8 years ago | on: AWS Secrets Manager – Store, Distribute, and Rotate Credentials Securely

The big missing piece is roles. No service uses a root access key directly. Instead, there's a webserver role with access to a relevant secrets group but no access to data warehouse secrets, for example.

Access keys can be provisioned and downloaded straight onto the box from the service. Sure, a compromise is bad, but only exposes the secrets that would be available on the pwned box regardless.

lmartel | 8 years ago | on: How to sell a $300 chocolate bar

It was more than a few months ago, but they published a best-selling eponymous book.

lmartel | 8 years ago | on: Facebook ordered to delete illegally collected data by Belgian court

So at minimum they've got your identity and much of your browser history.

Seems reasonable to call that obscene.

lmartel | 8 years ago | on: Show HN: An extension to turn your LinkedIn into a resume

That's not the purpose of grandfathered pricing, they just want to raise prices without upsetting active users.

If you cancel you're not an active user anymore :)

lmartel | 8 years ago | on: Stanford CS9: Problem-Solving for the CS Technical Interview

This may not have been a serious question but I'll give a serious answer: depending on the interviewer, you could get bonus points for going "above and beyond" or, yes, you could be penalized for "not reading the spec."

I've found that the best way to handle it in a conventional whiteboard interview is to mention it when appropriate and offer to add the functionality later.

"Now, here's the part of the code where I'd deal with odd N. Since we're guaranteed even N in the problem statement I'll skip this for now, but we can come back to harden this function later if you like."

lmartel | 8 years ago | on: Why Trying New Things Is So Hard to Do

It seems to me that "because, deep down, we don't want to" is a perfectly legitimate answer to the question posed by the title.

I agree, though, that _why_ we don't want to would be a more interesting article to read.

lmartel | 8 years ago | on: Magic: The Gathering Is Turing Complete (2012)

This didn't make intuitive sense to me so tried to Google it. Is "Introselect" what you're referring to? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Introselect

It's a hybrid of quickselect and median of medians, but the switching strategy's a bit more complicated.

lmartel | 8 years ago | on: Why You Can Focus in a Coffee Shop but Not in Your Open Office

I'm no fan of open offices but your workplace sounds like it has more issues than just the floor plan.

lmartel | 8 years ago | on: Show HN: Key Values – Find engineering teams that share your values

If one company will pay you 500k for working 60h/week and another will pay 500k for working 40h/week, then choosing the latter isn't entitlement. It's market forces at work.

If you think developers are overpaid, then just say that.

lmartel | 8 years ago | on: Introducing Transfer Appliance: Sneakernet for the cloud era

I don't know if I'd be comfortable relying on a third party for data export.

lmartel | 9 years ago | on: Typing the technical interview

People like Criss who ask this question in interviews are looking for a brute force solution with recursive backtracking.

lmartel | 9 years ago | on: Affordable Care

You didn't answer the question.

lmartel | 9 years ago | on: General questions about the Airbnb Community Commitment

No, that's not clear.

What's clear is that if you press "no" on the popup, they'll terminate your account.

What will happen if you press "yes" and then continue to discriminate however you like? My guess: not much.

lmartel | 9 years ago | on: Major Investor Sues Theranos

There's a difference between saying "I believe we can develop X" and "we currently have X." As I understand it, Holmes and Theranos did the latter. And that's fraud.