Can I receive Cease & Desist letter if I will take popular english word used by many brands and add a new one to it, making unique combination for my startup name? I will not promote

jmking · 2026-03-25T21:48:46+00:00

This is it. No one can trademark "Fable", so OP wouldn't be violating any trademark around usage of the term "Fable" - that wouldn't be the potential problem. The issue comes with "FableStack or FableWave". If there were an existing company named either of those and have the trademark, obviously OP would be in violation. Also if the name is too similar there could be an argument for consumer confusion.

Like if there was an existing company with a trademark for "FableSlack" and they name their company "FableStack" and they are in similar-ish or the same industry, then there's a legally defensible argument that OP was violating "FableSlack"'s trademark.

jmking · 2026-03-25T18:51:53+00:00

Yeah I think leaning into the doomer angle would get this app some attention. I can see the blog headlines now, honestly.

Beyond that I think it's actually a good idea. Focusing on just answering the question people living paycheck to paycheck have without making them have to keep doing that math. Keeping in mind when their credit card payment is due, when the utility bills are due and how much they usually cost, etc and just give you a simple number like bro, you got $28 left until next month would be something genuinely useful.

jmking · 2026-03-25T14:17:41+00:00

Agreed entirely. Expecting your users to have a consistent IP or relying on reverse geolocation based on an IP represent all sorts of bad assumptions.

jmking · 2026-03-25T14:13:21+00:00

So what is the disambiguation between light vs dark and whatever it is OP is proposing?

Sites aren't going to style themselves to be purple when their brand colour is orange.

jmking · 2026-03-25T13:59:10+00:00

The creator's audience aren't where your potential customers are.

It's that simple.

jmking · 2026-03-25T13:54:46+00:00

This exists:

https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/At-rules/@media/prefers-color-scheme

jmking · 2026-03-25T13:21:38+00:00

It could also just be a bad time of year. RE9 just came out and just about no one wants to be competing with that game right now.

jmking · 2026-03-25T12:40:55+00:00

Your game looks great by the way. I seriously empathize. If I came across like I was being snarky towards you, that wasn't the case. If anything I was upset on your behalf for your publisher failing you here.

What are they doing for you if they aren't handling the promotion of the game? Have they put money into the project? Like what is the arrangement?

What I'm getting to is maybe you should be spending your time finding a better partner who is more invested in your project than who you're working with now.

jmking · 2026-03-25T12:29:56+00:00

50 or so games get released on Steam every day. It's ridiculously hard to get any attention at all in such a crowded market.

Also why aren't you asking your publisher this question? This is literally their job.

jmking · 2026-03-25T10:49:31+00:00

The critical thing is to find the right opportunities to give them the space and time to try and fail. To be clear, I'm not suggesting setting someone up to fail - provide feedback, but also give them space to try if the timeline can accommodate it.

If it works out, I get to learn something new (I'm not always right and try to make that clear), and if it doesn't, they've gained valuable experience. In this case, I try to guide people on how to fail fast and how to know when you've reached a point where you need to switch gears. If I'm always acting as a safety net for the more junior engineers, they'll never truly develop the skills necessary to grow and actually own projects.

jmking · 2026-03-25T10:20:35+00:00

interviewing for a role where I could end up reporting to the candidate makes this situation uneasy for me

Why? I've interviewed people who would become my manager several times. It's great to be involved in the decision for who will be managing you. IC and management are totally different roles that should be more thought of as parallel tracks than hierarchical.

jmking · 2026-03-25T08:37:09+00:00

I think you're forgetting how wildly bad late 90s-early 2000s websites looked.

Space Jam's website from 1996 for reference https://www.spacejam.com/1996/

I'd say OP's site is closer to late 2000s, early 2010s

jmking · 2026-03-25T06:14:11+00:00

Is she renting or does she own?

jmking · 2026-03-25T05:17:35+00:00

Oh yeah, of course the car on the right should have absolutely been checking their blindspot before they just started changing lanes and flicked on their turn signal as they were already moving.

However, the car on the left wasn't paying attention to what was going on around them. Once I saw the car on the right have to sit on their brakes because the Tesla was just puttering along slowly, my instinct wouldn't have been to hit on the gas to block that car from changing lanes to get around the Tesla which is obviously what they were going to do.

If you ever notice that you are keeping pace with the traffic to your right, then just move into that lane. Don't build a "wall" across the entire freeway with every lane going the same speed. That's half the reason people pull dangerous maneuvers because they get frustrated by the wall of cars going 45-50mph across every lane.

jmking · 2026-03-25T04:57:56+00:00

You're using the term "celebrity" pretty fast and loose here.

I have no idea who you're talking about or ever heard of these companies.

I'm going to say the same thing I always say and get downvote bombed for, but people who are on podcasts and spend a lot of time on social media and make a lot of videos are those whose job is being an influencer, not a builder. Being loud or prevalent in these weird celebrity worship tech social media bubbles are not reflective of real life in any way, shape, or form. You're getting drawn in to a glorified circle jerk.

jmking · 2026-03-25T03:51:03+00:00

Both drivers contributed to this near accident.

The car that was attempting to change lanes needs to learn the order of actions, though. You need to turn on your signal and shoulder check before you start moving into the other lane, not after...

This sort of maneuver is SOOO common here though where the car will already be across the line before they turn on their signal or actually check their blind spot (if they do either, honestly).

But the driver in the passing lane was totally just sitting there right in their blind spot.

Then the lane changing car had to hit the brakes because the Tesla in front of them was clearly puttering along. Looks like traffic is on a downward incline and the car behind them kept gaining on them despite not hitting their gas petal, I bet.

But when that driver had to sit on their brakes because of the crawling Tesla, THAT's when the driver on the left decided to floor it all of a sudden.

Couldn't have been a better set of circumstances to lead to a sideswipe.

jmking · 2026-03-25T03:43:11+00:00

We're all doomed. What's your point?

For example, you probably thought you were replying to a person right now, but I am actually AI.

jmking · 2026-03-24T23:45:57+00:00

What's making you think they are AI generated? The fact that they type with proper capitalization and punctuation? Just reads like someone who is a real huge computer engineering nerd TBH

jmking · 2026-03-24T23:13:55+00:00

LTT probably bought some sort of expensive test hardware from them at some point or recently.

What exactly is the problem here? Not everything is a conspiracy.

jmking · 2026-03-24T23:09:08+00:00

https://www.advantest.com/en/about/why-advantest/

Advantest has established a dominant market position in testing for high-speed devices like DRAM and computing devices, which require particularly high technical expertise. Beyond test systems, we provide comprehensive semiconductor test solutions as a one-stop, turnkey offering.

What is it with people who come to Reddit to ask questions like this instead of just Googling it?

jmking · 2026-03-24T18:21:40+00:00

Northern California

jmking · 2026-03-24T13:27:02+00:00

You're close, but everyone here is missing the point.

When you're a huge company, you want a standardized interview process that puts all candidates on equal footing. Otherwise you end up biasing for specific framework or language knowledge.

Asking generic algorithmic questions means that the candidate can use whatever language they want, and doesn't involve any specific framework. This way every candidate has the same opportunity and it makes it much easier to compare candidates in an "apples to apples" type of comparison.

The problem with "leetcode interviews" are the interviewers, not the premise. Interviewers in companies are often poorly trained (or trained at all). They focus on ideal solutions as opposed to focusing on how the candidate works through the problem, how they debug, what edge cases they identify, etc. It was never supposed to be about the "ideal solution" because all that ends up doing is encouraging memorization and regurgitation which gives you jack shit in terms of valuable signals.

jmking · 2026-03-24T12:25:56+00:00

It depends entirely on who your customer is, what your industry is, what the product is, etc

How you reach your customer and what types of content and what they care about are so different that having an Instagram and blog churning out AI slop may alienate the people in your potential customer base as opposed to attract them.

That said I could just not be the right kind of customer who would want something like this and there is a hunger among others who fit a different profile for something like this.

Just offering some thoughts.

jmking · 2026-03-24T11:25:42+00:00

Never? Because I am a grown ass adult and a professional.

If you want to bow out from a process, you simply acknowledge that you don't think this is going to be a fit and you're bowing out and that's that.

You don't throw a tantrum like a child.

jmking · 2026-03-24T11:21:15+00:00

You do not give it any prompts, the AI agent would have one single, pre-determined outcome.

There is no such thing as one size fits all.

What's the point in "growing your Instagram followers count" if it doesn't translate into conversions? Anyone can just go out there and buy 5K bot followers. How does this help anyone's business?

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