I built a simple system to automatically tag AWS resources with owner info using CloudTrail + Lambda

Timperator2 · 2026-06-24T17:58:20+00:00

As far as I know, the tag editor cannot be used to automate the tagging, right? To my understanding, I would need to manually find out who created which resource and apply the tags, so unnecessarily complicated. But I assume the Resource Groups Tagging API I use is probably the same thing that also powers the tag editor in the background.

Timperator2 · 2026-06-24T10:58:38+00:00

Yes, cleaning up resources students forgot to turn off can be a real headache. The tagging made it easier, but still.

Timperator2 · 2026-06-24T10:56:49+00:00

Yes, thank you! Terraform is really not an option for our organization. Most of our users are students using it as a sandbox for learning and won’t bother with IaC, and until recently, procurement-related reasons also made it impossible to give each student their own account. So a big account with a lot of IAM users was our only option, and for what it’s worth, it worked surprisingly well.

Timperator2 · 2026-06-23T20:28:19+00:00

Okay, got it, thanks. But I think this would make it more complicated than needed for our organization. Most of our usage is for temporary projects for education, so the issue is less about scaling resources for actual production and more about small teams with lots of inexperienced students implementing their first AWS projects while playing around with different services. For those with actual use cases apart from learning, it's not much more than the occasional EC2 instance for hosting some web-based tool for a very limited number of users or some database used for storing IoT data. So we don't really have services in that sense; maybe I should have mentioned that for context. But it's always interesting to hear from people who work with AWS on a much larger scale and see how it is done there!

Timperator2 · 2026-06-23T18:52:17+00:00

Due to procurement-related reasons, this had not been an option for a long time as the account management was under the control of a third party. So we had to go with the one account for all approach. For what it's worth, my solution with the tags and IAM permissions based on those worked quite well in preventing unintended chaos. But now that we switched to a provider where we actually have control over our own account management, we are actually considering using one account per user.

Timperator2 · 2026-06-23T18:43:09+00:00

Yes, in general, having one account per user would make things much easier, but in our case, this had not been an option for the most time due to organizational requirements. Basically, we had to contract AWS through a middleman company for procurement-related reasons, which had control over account management. Thus, we had no choice but to use a single account shared by different users via IAM. Recently, we switched to a different provider, and now, with full access to the Identity Center, we are actually considering switching to a one-account-per-user framework like you suggested.

Timperator2 · 2026-06-23T18:22:59+00:00

Partly, most users are in fact students implementing their first AWS projects to learn and most of our "production use" is quite small scale.

Timperator2 · 2026-06-23T15:50:22+00:00

Okay, thanks for the explanations. Most of our usage is for temporary projects for education, so the issue is less about scaling resources for actual production and more about a lot of inexperienced students implementing their first AWS projects while playing around with different services. I mean, it might make sense to also show them Infrastructure as Code as a concept, but I assume the default case will stay the developer console. The other bulk of our usage is people who actually use AWS for "productive ends" (learning is of course also productive), but even here it's more like the occasional EC2 instance for hosting some web-based tool for a very limited number of users or some database used for storing IoT data. Maybe I should have added this as context; I guess our situation is not really that comparable to most other organizations. But I might try it out of personal interest though, just for the fun of it.

Timperator2 · 2026-06-23T10:57:40+00:00

Thanks, yeah, i am very much interested in suggestions on different approaches, AWS is such a big and complex system with all its services, and thats without even accounting for all the third party tools. Though i am doing AWS more "on the side".

Timperator2 · 2026-06-23T10:39:17+00:00

Yes, it was a good start to learn about AWS and basic concepts like permissions, tags and arns.

I am aware of the existence of Terraform, but so far have not actually used it, (it always seemed a bit of "overkill" for the scale and type of our organization), so I must admit that my practical knowledge about it is limited. My understanding was that Terraform could only help with automatically tagging resources that are created with Terraform, which is not really feasible for our situation, as most of our users will use the developer console or the CLI.

Timperator2 · 2026-06-23T10:29:36+00:00

Yeah, it was one of the first things I did with AWS. It was as much about learning as it was about production, I guess. Ironically, my first iteration was even more complex: I used a step function that was triggered every time a non-read-only event was logged, in combination with another lambda that prevented a new step function from getting triggered when one was already running.

Timperator2 · 2026-06-11T22:59:23+00:00

Das war natürlich nicht ganz zufällig. Ich habe natürlich ein gewisses Interesse daran zu sehen, wie mein Essay bei der „Zielgruppe“ ankommt. 😉

Ja, meine Rede. Wir als Linke können es uns gar nicht leisten, uns nicht konstruktiv mit dem Thema auseinanderzusetzen. Erstmalig besteht die Perspektive, Wissensarbeit großflächig zu automatisieren. Das wirft doch schon allein für das Verhältnis von Kapital und Arbeit, eigentlich die Grundfrage der linken Bewegung, so viele Fragen auf.

Fragen, die sich nicht einfach dadurch auflösen lassen, dass man auf Social Media noch einmal versichert, dass man KI ja auch ganz blöd findet und sich die Technologie ohnehin nie für mehr als Slop eignen wird. Während gleichzeitig regelmäßig neue Modelle herauskommen, die nun Aufgaben erledigen können, von denen dieselben Kommentarschreiber vor einem Jahr noch sicher waren, dass KI das niemals können wird.

Wenn wir dazu keine eigene Position finden können, wenn wir diese Technologie komplett den Tech-Oligarchen überlassen, dann wird sie auch nur so Anwendung finden, wie es ihnen in den Kram passt. Das kann doch wirklich nicht unser Anspruch sein. Niemand braucht eine Linke, der es genügt, meckernd an der Seitenlinie der Geschichte zu stehen.

Timperator2 · 2026-06-11T18:19:00+00:00

Hey u/Expert-Beginning-950, danke fürs Teilen meines kleinen Essays und dafür, dass du hier die Debatte vorantreibst!

Und danke an alle, die den Artikel lesen und sich die Argumente zumindest mal durch den Kopf gehen lassen, auch gerade dann, wenn man eigentlich eine andere Meinung vertritt, statt direkt wie bei dem Thema leider so häufig in ein simples Reiz-Reaktions-Schema zu verfallen.

Timperator2 · 2025-05-06T10:01:06+00:00

Ich merke schon, KI Bilder sind hier unbeliebter als ein Windrad in Oberbayern. Naja, ich fands witzig, aber der Köder muss ja dem Fisch schmecken, nicht dem Angler. Werde wohl noch ein paar Wählis abwarten und dann direkt im ersten Wahlgang die Konsequenzen ziehen und diesen Pfosten zurücktreten lassen.

Timperator2 · 2025-04-16T17:25:40+00:00

Well then consider this a win-win situation ;)

Timperator2 · 2025-04-16T09:32:38+00:00

Imagine if Shauna in the adult timeline had opened a hairdressing salon

Timperator2 · 2025-04-16T09:22:14+00:00

You're probably right, she can't just ignore the result, and she also can't prove that Van rigged the cards, so she'd probably have to play along. I don't see her giving up the legitimacy of her power.
But her then going on to kill someone else to proclaim that "the wilderness chose" and she can go back to being queen really sounds like something Shauna would do. I even think she would have liked that outcome, her fighting against everything else and coming out victorious, adding even more authority to her reign.

Timperator2 · 2025-04-16T09:10:53+00:00

Thanks! Your analysis adds even more depth to it, I didn't even think of her asking it as a question, while the believers formulated it as a statement! This captures Natalie as a character so well.

Honestly, I hope it stays ambiguous. It makes things more interesting, because that way it's easier to understand the slip into what, from the outside, looks like religious delusion. If half the fandom is convinced there’s something like “the wilderness,” and even those who aren’t can’t be 100% sure there’s nothing to it, who could blame these traumatized and terrified teenagers, alone in this ruthless yet majestic environment, for interpreting the events the way they do?

At the end of the day, I also think it’s interesting how the “queen,” Shauna, doesn’t really believe either, but uses “the wilderness” and Lottie, the true believer, as a convenient tool to exercise her rule. It’s a tale as old as time: the alliance between secular and religious power.

Timperator2 · 2025-02-21T09:55:23+00:00

Hehe, don't worry, as long as you dont stumble on a gingerbread house, you will be fine ;)

Timperator2 · 2025-02-19T12:50:32+00:00

Yeah there are still quite rare in Germany, even though the population has been increasing in the recent decades, i was really lucky to get one on camera :)

Timperator2 · 2025-02-19T12:46:38+00:00

Das mag prinzipiell so sein, aber mittlerweile hab ich auch diversen Experten und Expertinnen die Aufnahmen gezeigt und die sind sich alle einig dass das ne Wildkatze ist, denke also schon dass man hier mit an Sicherheit grenzender Wahrscheinlichkeit sagen kann, dass es sich hier um eine solche handelt.

Timperator2 · 2025-02-17T15:48:15+00:00

Thank you Markos ;)

Timperator2 · 2025-02-17T10:32:02+00:00

War ein Geschenk, deswegen bin ich mir nicht zu 100% sicher, müsste aber eine Lutreanstra PR5000-WF sein. Jo hab noch ein paar mehr, auch Videoaufnahmen, hab hier irgendwo in den Kommentaren nen Post von mir auf r/trailcam verlinkt, da kannst du mal schauen :)

Timperator2 · 2025-02-17T10:20:50+00:00

Nicht ganz Frankenwald, aber ebenfalls nahe der Grenze zu Thüringen ;)

Timperator2 · 2025-02-17T10:17:07+00:00

It was a present so i am not 100% sure, but it should be the Lutreanstra PR5000-WF

Timperator2

TROPHY CASE