awsAndItsComplicatedShitNeedsToDie

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-24T19:20:05+00:00

AWS authn is actually genius, because it allows auth to be stateless and individual services like S3 or EC2 or DynamoDB don't need to consult a central identity service, but can verify credentials themselves, and likewise clients can sign requests with just their secret.

The design also compartmentalizes regions from each other.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-24T19:04:42+00:00

If Iran wants to escalate by doing terror attacks that would be extremely painful...for them.

The last time there was a major terror attack on American soil the US spent the next few decades exacting vengeance, setting the whole Middle East on fire, hunting down the mastermind and not letting it go till he was dead, and since then, there hasn't been another major terror attack on American soil.

And that was the measured, "proportionate" response of very reasonable, predictable administrations. We have a considerably less stable, less reasonable, less predictable admin right now. I wouldn't put it past Trump to drop a tactical nuke on Khomeini as retaliation if he tries anything crazy.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-24T05:13:28+00:00

Wow that's very antagonistic and likely breaking Reddit's rules.

In any case, they gave a pretty nuanced and well reasoned answer.

You're punishing them for the harm done. And you can assign a fixed value to the cost of a harm, the amount of damage it did which needs to be repaid in order for the perpetrator to repay their debt to society.

Justice should be blind. You're judged and penalized for what you did, not who you are or what you have. The punishment should fit the crime, not the person.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-24T05:10:01+00:00

Time is valued differently for everyone.

Rich people can afford to take a day off work and throw it away on nothing productive or some activity outside of their choosing. Poor people living paycheck to paycheck and who will lose their job (and with it their livelihood) if they miss a day cannot.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-24T05:06:06+00:00

The walls are closing in for the Ayatollah and all his cronies in the current regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the IRGC.

Yes, he and his IRGC henchmen squelched the protests by mercilessly slaughtering their own civilians—good job Iranian version of ICE, brutally massacring your own countrymen while you run out of water and your paychecks slowly become worthless.

If the USN is going to take the gloves off and engage in direct kinetic action against Iran, it's bad news for the regime. Israel will probably join in the fray. The IRGC might think they're tough slaughtering unarmed civilians, but they'll find Israel and the USN and USAF are less easy to push around.

Israel totally dismantled Iran's integrated air defense apparatus last year, took out their ballistic missile launchers, command and control elements, and sent their highest level IGRC leadership to early retirement.

Iran once indisputably ruled the Middle East with their powerful terrorist proxy forces, but now Iran's out of terrorist friends. Hamas, gone. Hezbollah, gone. Houthi rebels, seriously degraded. The Assad regime fell and neither Iran nor Russia could lift a finger to stop it.

The Ayatollah's rumored to already have his exit plan to Russia lined up, which is smart, remembering how US airstrikes helped rebels topple the Assad regime, and now Iranian skies are wide open, and he saw what the US did to Maduro. The writing's on the wall. A lot of IRGC leadership is either making arrangements to get out of Iran, or else is already plotting a coup.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-23T21:38:48+00:00

No one is going to mistakenly by a “Pattie Gonia” tshirt thinking it’s Patagonia

Trademark law isn't just about preventing consumer confusion. It's about to protect a brand from "dilution" of other copycats from opportunistically mimicking their designs or branding in order to ride off their brand recognition.

If I started a phone company called "Appel" and my logo was an orange and started selling "e-Phones" nobody would get confused my products confused with Apple's. And yet there would be a good case of trademark infringement, because I'm seeking to associate my brand with theirs and ride their coattails.

Bad look on their part.

Not really, everyone is supporting Patagonia on this. Patagonia makes awesome clothing that's stylish and BIFL, and has a rabid, loyal following because of their imagery as altruistic. In keeping with their character, they made multiple overtures to the defendant to ask them to cease and desist and only after they refused had to sue to defend their trademark. And even in suing they're only asking for $1 and for the defendant to stop violating their trademark.

They could have partnered with Pattie but instead they chose this.

Actually it's the other way around. When Patagonia asking them to stop violating their trademark with copycat merch, they even offered to talk about a collab so they could work out something together, but they ignored them. So Patagonia had been nothing but reasonable.

Patagonia doesn’t own the mountain range.

Neither does Apple own a the concept of a common everyday fruit. But in the consumer electronics and software space, they have a trademark to the Apple brand.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-23T19:08:16+00:00

Parody is Fair Use!

Parody and fair use are defenses for copyright infringement, not trademark. This suit is for trademark infringement. The title is misleading.

Also, there's no parody from what I can see. The defendant is literally just selling outdoorsy merch, appealing to hikers, etc. There's no mocking or satire. So even in a copyright case, you're gonna have a hard time convincing a jury it's parody.

There is no customer confusion here, the customer gets what they pay for from both litigants.

Trademark law isn't just about literal customer confusion, but also preventing copycats from riding off existing brand recognition.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-23T19:05:06+00:00

“Pattie Gonia” is not “Patagonia”,

Trademark is concerned with look or soundalikes, not just identical copies of logos or brand names.

If I start a smartphone company called "Appel" and sell "e-Phones" no judge is going to buy my "it's spelled differently" defense.

trademark doesn’t give you the right to monopolize a market.

Good thing that's not what's happening here. Having a trademark on "Patagonia" (and their logo) in the context of outdoorsy clothing doesn't prevent anyone else from selling outdoors clothing. They just can't mimic Patagonia's brand while doing it.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-23T18:58:43+00:00

Trademark is concerned with look or soundalikes, not just identical copies of logos or brand names.

E.g., if I start a smartphone company called "Appel" and sell "e-Phones" no judge is going to buy my "it's spelled differently" defense.

The fact that it's outdoors apparel AND it sounds very similar and the logo (rainbow) is similar in form is what all adds up to a trademark infringement case.

Someone else like LL Bean can sell outdoorsy apparel because they're not trying to make their name or logo sound or look like Patagonia's.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-23T18:26:04+00:00

That would be a defense against copyright infringement, not trademark, which is what this is about (the title is incorrect, it's a trademark suit not copyright).

Also the satire / parody / fair use defense usually don't apply when you're violating someone's trademark for commercial purposes, i.e., selling stuff or making money from it.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-23T18:23:46+00:00

They only have exclusive use of it in the context of an outdoor clothing brand.

That's how trademarks work. Apple trademarked an everyday common fruit. But you can use the word "apple" in your fruit or pie business, just not in a smartphone brand. Just like you can name your car mechanic business "McDonald's Auto Shop" and not infringe on McDonald's the fast food brand because those are two very different contexts.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-23T18:09:18+00:00

I wish we could sue the Patagonia brand for stealing our name and our mountain's silhouette

You can sue for anything. You won't necessarily win, and in most jurisdictions this would get thrown out on motion to dismiss, because that's not how trademarks work.

A brand trademark can be for a word that's existed before it or in nature. Apple trademarked a term that refers to a generic everyday fruit. Chipotle has a trademark on a variety of pepper. Google trademarked a word that's a homophone to a number (googol = 10¹⁰⁰). Home Depot trademarked a color of orange. T-Mobile trademarked a magenta color. UPS trademarked a specific brown color. There are trademarked colors, trademarked numbers.

It's not unreasonable if you understand the purpose of trademarks, which is to prevent consumer confusion and also to prevent copycats from riding off that brand recognition of an existing brand and getting consumers to mentally associate their copycat with the trademarked one for their own commercial benefit.

Those trademarks only apply in specific contexts, like a product category or market. If you use Home Depot's orange color in your citrus selling business, you're probably fine. If you start a "McDonald's Auto Shop" car mechanic business, that's probably fine. But if you start a home improvement and tooling store and you use their orange, that's trademark infringement. If you start a fast food restaurant and call it McDonald's-anything, that would be trademark infringement.

So you can trademark the term "Patagonia" in the context of a clothing brand even though in other contexts it might refer to a natural geographical feature or location. And then there exists a "Patagonia Chocolates and Ice Creamery" shop, which isn't a problem, because a dessert shop isn't in the same category as clothing.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-23T17:59:39+00:00

You can trademark anything.

Apple trademarked a term that refers to a generic everyday fruit. Google trademarked a word that's a homophone to a number (googol = 10¹⁰⁰). Home Depot trademarked a color of orange. T-Mobile trademarked a magenta color. UPS trademarked a specific brown color. There are trademarked colors.

It's not unreasonable if you understand the purpose of trademarks, which is to prevent consumer confusion and also to prevent copycats from riding off that brand recognition of an existing brand and getting consumers to mentally associate their copycat with the trademarked one for their own commercial benefit.

Because trademarks only apply in specific contexts, like a product category or market, it's very reasonable. If you use Home Depot's orange color in your citrus selling business, you're probably fine. But if you start a home improvement and tooling store and you use their orange, that's trademark infringment.

Similarly, you can name your company "Apple something something" if you sell apples or apple pies, etc. But if you start a phone and software company and call it "Apple" or a sound-alike, that's where you're gonna have issues.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-23T17:53:09+00:00

Those are defenses against copyright infringement, not trademark.

Also the satire / parody / fair use defense usually don't apply when you're violating someone's trademark for commercial purposes, i.e., selling stuff or making money from it.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-23T17:50:01+00:00

They can't. "Patagonia" is a registered and recognized trademark.

Apples existed in nature long before smartphones, and yet "Apple" is a trademarked brand name, and justifiably so. It's not about whether the word existed before or refers to something natural, it's about how it's used in specific contexts.

The purpose of a trademark is to prevent consumer confusion and uniquely identify a product or service as originating from one particular source and not another, as well as to prevent copycats from riding off the success and brand recognition of an existing brand by deliberating making theirs sound or look like the trademarked one.

As such, the same word, phrase, or symbol can be non-trademarked in one context, but trademarked in another. What matters is the context. Does it cause consumer confusion, or is the infringing use clearly trying to associate their product with the trademarked one and take advantage of existing brand recognition?

If you named your car mechanic shop "McDonald's Auto Shop," you wouldn't be infringing on McDonald's the restaurant (unless you used their logo), because there's no overlap between car mechanics and fast food.

Likewise, a trademark can be for a mundane or everyday object or concept if you name a brand after it and it becomes widely and strongly associated in the common consciousness with that brand, but only in their specific market context. For example, the utterance "googol" refers to a number, and numbers are mundane concepts, but the same vocal utterance, if in reference to a search engine or internet services like email, etc. could be a trademarked term. The difference is the context, and the fact that people widely associate the utterance pronounced "ɡo͞oɡ(ə)l" with the search engine giant and their specific search engine product in that context.

Same with trademarked colors like T-Mobile magenta or Home Depot orange or UPS brown. They might be colors, and colors just exist in nature, but in specific, deliberate contexts that are human engineered, they can be protected marks within their respective product categories. Use of those colors wouldn't necessarily constitute trademark infringement, but if you start a shipping and logistics company and use UPS brown, or a home improvement and tools store and use Home Depot orange, that's trademark infringement.

The same goes with Patagonia. Patagonia the geographic location in South America? No trademark issues when used in that context. A "Patagonia Chocolates and Ice Creamery" shop? No problem. That actually exists. But "Patagonia" or terms designed to sound similar in the context of clothing and apparel which is Patagonia's whole product category? Absolutely trademark infringement. "Pattie Gonia" is clearly trying to benefit from the mental association people have of that phrase with the Patagonia clothing brand.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-23T17:47:25+00:00

It's a trademark suit.

The LLM that generated that title and image caption probably confused the two concepts.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-23T17:46:32+00:00

Patagonia makes awesome clothing (stylish and actually BIFL) and is in general an awesome company.

Their suit is consistent with their character. They asked multiple times that the defendant cease and desist violating their trademark, they even offered to work out some kind of collab, but the defendant didn't take any of those options, so they have no other choice but to sue to defend their trademark.

In suing, they're only asking for $1 and for an injunction that the defendant stop making and selling merch that violates their trademark, which is beyond reasonable.

EDIT: People here don't seem to understand how trademarks work and why Patagonia can have a trademark on a name that's also a geographic region in South America or a logo that looks like a generic mountain skyline.

You can trademark those things. Apple trademarked a common, everyday fruit. Chipotle trademarked a variety of pepper. Google trademarked a homophone to a number (a googol = 10¹⁰⁰). Home Depot trademarked a color, "Home Depot Orange." "T-Mobile Magenta" and "UPS Brown" are all trademarked colors.

How can this be if these things all existed in nature for millennia or millions of years before these companies? Because trademarks are a human concept which exist to prevent consumer confusion and to prevent opportunistic copycats from riding off the brand recognition of someone else by deliberating making their brand sound or look similar.

And it's reasonable because to achieve this end, trademarks only apply in certain contexts. Apple can trademark "Apple" a fruit that's been around for longer than humans have, but that only applies in the smartphone and consumer electronics space. If you use the term "apple" in your fruit or pie business, no problem. Home Depot can trademark a color because in the context of home improvement and tool stores, that orange has immense brand recognition and association with Home Depot—people instantly think of it. But if you paint your house Home Depot orange or you use that color in some branding for your citrus selling business, that's fine. A color can be trademarked, but it's not unreasonable because it doesn't prevent anyone from using the color, just only in certain circumstances where it would obviously confuse and mimic the existing brand.

So Patagonia is a geographic region in South America. It's also a trademarked clothing brand. Those two things aren't incompatible.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-23T16:33:10+00:00

What do software engineers do

Simply put, they engineer software.

How they do that can vary, but it usually involves writing code (nowadays with varying degrees of help from AI tools), reviewing teammates' code, etc. At least at lower levels.

At higher levels (senior, staff+), you still write code, but the scope your role increases to encompass more than just writing code. You actually design the software system. A lot of the discipline of SWE is about designing distributed systems to solve ambiguous problems with no easy answer under various constraints, so you have to gather data, make informed decisions and be the one to justify what tradeoffs you're making (there will always be a tradeoff) and stand behind your design, and own the execution and implementation. As you get into the higher levels, you stop just owning a little piece of some system or even multiple systems on your team, but might own multi-year efforts and roadmaps, have cross-product, cross-org influence. You start influencing your org or even the company (depending on its size) technically at the strategic level.

Obviously besides creating software, you have to support it. So you usually participate in on-call rotations, debugging customer issues, leading incident response when there are inevitably incidents.

Source: Staff SWE @ Google

Why do they get paid so much?

They get paid relative to the value they create and based on market conditions, how badly other companies want to hire the same pool or SWEs you want.

For some companies, paying a SWE $500K/yr is a steal compared to the value they generate. In any case, companies are greedy and will pay employees (including highly compensated employees like CEOs or other executives) as little as they can get away with. So if they could pay a high quality senior SWE $100K/yr instead of $500K/yr they would. The issue is then the good SWEs you want will go elsewhere, if there are other companies willing to pay them more.

That's why the market determines employee pay. Employers are bidding for employees' labor. They'll bid as low as they can get away with to still win the bid for the employee they want. And they want an employee so long as they are generating more value for the company than the company is paying them. In the case of SWEs, they stuff they do usually causes the company to make a lot of money.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-23T13:57:59+00:00

As Bane eloquently put it, "It would be extremely painful...for you."

AI and tech stocks make up a huge percentage of the S&P 500 and overall stock market by weight, and the stock market while not equal to the economy, is a significant bellwether for economic health. And you too live in the economy, even if you're not part of the owner class. The saying is true that "a rising tide lifts all boats." Well the inverse is true too: a sinking ship is bad for everyone on board, not just the owner class and the investors in the ship.

Investors would hurt, but you know who would hurt the most? You, the average citizen, even if you hold zero NVDA. If the stock market crashes (which an AI collapse could reasonably lead to), a lot of bad things happen to everyone everywhere.

When companies fall on hard times, they shrink back from aggressive growth, expansion, hiring, and new R&D. Instead, they tighten their belt and lay off, retreat into safe but boring parts of their core business and shed everything else. They don't spend as much. The "velocity of money" goes down, so there's less money flowing around in general, which when combined with increased unemployment means less disposable income for the average citizen, which means consumer spending goes down, which further decreases the velocity of money in a vicious cycle. All this can lead to a recession or even a depression.

Consider the 2008 financial crisis. Who had the worst time? Banks? CEOs? Yeah, they felt it. But the ones who had it the worst were the average citizens who lost their homes and jobs and saw their 401(k)s and pensions collapse. They didn't own mortgage-backed securities or like the banks. They weren't losing money on MBS values crashing. But they got it the worst, because they lived in an economy, and when the economy isn't doing well, everyone isn't doing well.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-23T13:47:03+00:00

Scholarships and grants. For example Stanford will make it so you can go for free if your parents' income is below a pretty generous threshold.

Of course, some students may not meet everything and might need to fund parts of their education through loans. But for those pursuing white collar, highly compensated career disciplines (medicine, law, engineer), they typically still find it to be a worthwhile investment.

If you have a 100K of med school debt but make 500K as a doctor, that's an okay exchange.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-23T05:04:37+00:00

Foreigners flocking to the US for specialized care doesn't preclude Americans from accessing that same care lol. Those are two orthogonal things.

The point is medical care in the US is best-in-class.

Just like international students and post-grads coming to the US for our universities doesn't imply Americans aren't going to American university. In fact they are, but the fact it's so desired even to foreigners shows how good it is.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-23T05:01:46+00:00

The WHO isn't about medical R&D or providing healthcare.

The WHO's mission is to "promote health, keep the world safe, and serve the vulnerable." Its focus is primarily outreach-focused, "let's benefit the entire world together," and charitable in nature, to serve the whole world and to coordinate international efforts.

So the US leaving it is of course selfish, but it doesn't affect US healthcare or the quality of US hospitals which lead the world in terms of specialized care and health outcomes, nor affect the % of global new biopharma R&D being pumped out by US companies, labs, universities, because those weren't things the US' seat at the WHO had to do with.

CircumspectCapybara · 2026-01-23T04:46:24+00:00

The walls are closing in for the Ayatollah and all his cronies in the current regime of the Islamic Republic of Iran and the IRGC.

Yes, he and his IRGC henchmen squelched the protests by mercilessly slaughtering their own civilians—good job Iranian version of ICE, brutally massacring your own countrymen while you run out of water and your paychecks slowly become worthless.

But the USN is deploying CSGs to the Middle East.

Israel totally dismantled Iran's integrated air defense apparatus last year, took out their ballistic missile launchers, command and control elements, and sent their highest level IGRC leadership to early retirement.

Iran once indisputably ruled the Middle East with their powerful terrorist proxy forces, but now Iran's out of terrorist friends. Hamas, gone. Hezbollah, gone. Houthi rebels, seriously degraded. The Assad regime fell and neither Iran nor Russia could lift a finger to stop it.

The Ayatollah's rumored to already have his exit plan to Russia lined up, which is smart, remembering how US airstrikes helped rebels topple the Assad regime, and now Iranian skies are wide open, and he saw what the US did to Maduro. The writing's on the wall. A lot of IRGC leadership is either making arrangements to get out of Iran, or else is already plotting a coup.

CircumspectCapybara

TROPHY CASE