lmartel (u/lmartel) - Readit News

lmartel commented on FDA Moves to Ban All Menthol Cigarettes and Flavored Cigars fda.gov/news-events/press... · Posted by u/donatj

ketzo · 5 years ago

I’m extremely in favor of harm-reduction legislation in general, and I think this ban is a good idea overall. Flavors are effective at hooking young people in particular — lots of vaping research has shown that — and so get it outta here. Great.

But man, “ban menthols because Black people like them” sure feels a little weird.

Like, I get that’s not exactly what’s going on. But.. it’s a little bit what’s going on?

I guess it’s just worth watching closely any time someone talks about protecting disadvantaged groups. I think that is actually what’s happening here, but it’s suuuuch a short rhetorical jump to “well, the under classes can’t be trusted with lottery tickets!” and so on.

Edit: just to make it abundantly clear: I don't think the FDA is actually banning menthols because Black people enjoy them. But I think their reasoning isn't too far from that, and it's worth being watchful for that sort of paternalism, IMO.

lmartel · 5 years ago

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 commented on How to get your money back on a non-refundable hotel philip.greenspun.com/blog... · Posted by u/notlukesky

chadash · 6 years ago

By booking a non-refundable rate, which is generally cheaper, you took that risk. So long as the hotel is open, it's not really their problem. The fact that they have more money than you doesn't give you the right to steal from them.

If you really need the money for basic survival, fine, we can argue about the morality of it. But even with a possible recession looming, it's unlikely that the price of a hotel stay is going to be the difference between life and death for you.

It's unlikely you are in basic survival mode yet, unless you've already lost your job and are living paycheck to paycheck and there are no available government programs to help you right now and no friends or family to turn to.

lmartel · 6 years ago

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 commented on Why you can't get cell service on the tarmac thepointsguy.com/news/slo... · Posted by u/tptacek

throwaway1777 · 6 years ago

This is a good thing. Nothing more annoying than sitting next to someone yapping on their phone in a plane.

lmartel · 6 years ago

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

lmartel commented on Ask HN: We are shutting down our startup, I get our code. What now? · Posted by u/sad_cofounder

a13n · 6 years ago

As a co-founder, you accept the risk that if your company fails, you get nothing, and you might not get compensated for your time. That's just how startups work. High risk, high reward.

Therefore it's ridiculous to say OP deserves a % of revenue/profit/equity of their co-founders next venture. There's no legal or ethical basis for negotiating this.

lmartel · 6 years ago

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 commented on Show HN: I built a podcast app that skips over the ads adskippro.com... · Posted by u/adskipprod

endorphone · 6 years ago

Podcast ads have a much more insidious problem in that they perpetuate and encourage a disingenuous, lie-for-dollars[1] culture. Hearing podcasters gushing about products that just so happen to sponsor their podcast is exactly what advertisers are paying for -- that it's "genuine" and someone who you theoretically trust is pitching whatever they're selling -- and it's just incredibly greasy and distasteful. It is the lowest form of sponsorship.

When I see ads on the NYTimes I know they're just whoever paid for the space. It isn't the NYTimes claiming to have curated the best of the best and they're only showing you the greatest products and this just happens to be The Best pickup truck out there, etc. Eh.

[1] - Every podcaster is going to claim that no, it's really what they think, what a marvelous coincidence. It's amazing what someone will "think" when their paycheque relies upon it.

lmartel · 6 years ago

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 commented on Uber executive resigns following probe into racial discrimination reuters.com/article/us-ub... · Posted by u/jbegley

creddit · 8 years ago

Then why mention it at all? If you're not willing to back up such a statement like that with any kind of reasoning and state so explicitly, why bother telling anyone? This is a forum; implying a place for discussion. If you don't intend to do that, refraining from such provocative but unsubstantiated additions is more positive.

lmartel · 8 years ago

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 commented on AWS Secrets Manager – Store, Distribute, and Rotate Credentials Securely aws.amazon.com/blogs/aws/... · Posted by u/dustinrcollins

sowbug · 8 years ago

For those of us living in the service-development stone ages, is the idea that a secret-manager service replaces any number of ad-hoc local secret-storage and configuration mechanisms with a single robust mechanism that takes only a single root credential to retrieve all the individual secrets that your service needs?

You do still have to figure out a way to securely provide the root credential to your service so that it can fetch the secrets from the secret manager, correct? Otherwise this would be magic of a kind I think is impossible.

If my questions aren't too far off in the weeds, then this service sounds like a personal password manager but for a service rather than a person, though I'm sure AWS's service has finer-grained controls than just the all-or-nothing master passphrase. Similar risks apply: an attacker obtaining the master passphrase is a major issue, losing the master passphrase is devastating (though recoverable here because you probably didn't lose your personal AWS login credentials), and unavailability of the password database is catastrophic. But the usability benefits of having everything in one secure place, behind a service managed by experts, should outweigh those risks.

I have more questions about the credential-rotation feature, but this is enough for now.

lmartel · 8 years ago

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.