[HN Gopher] My favorite database shirts
       ___________________________________________________________________
        
       My favorite database shirts
        
       Author : k-rus
       Score  : 170 points
       Date   : 2023-11-27 15:07 UTC (7 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (www.cs.cmu.edu)
 (TXT) w3m dump (www.cs.cmu.edu)
        
       | bigdict wrote:
       | Is this guy seriously running clickbait ads on an academic
       | subdomain?
        
         | 123pie123 wrote:
         | whats clickbait about it?
         | 
         | it looks like blog about how he likes his t-shirts
         | 
         | I can't see any ads - although my firefox extentions will be
         | blocking them if there was any
        
           | KomoD wrote:
           | There's ads.
        
         | rafram wrote:
         | There are no links to buy any of the shirts on the page. It's a
         | tongue-in-cheek comparison of startup swag.
        
           | cbb330 wrote:
           | Scroll to the bottom.
        
             | lopkeny12ko wrote:
             | Are you talking about the footnotes at the bottom? There
             | are no links to buy the shirts there either...
        
               | KomoD wrote:
               | No, the ads injected by Disqus
        
         | nlarew wrote:
         | Seems like everyone here is running an Adblocker! The post uses
         | Disqus for comments and has the built-in (garbage) ads enabled.
         | 
         | I think it's likely that the OP uses an adblocker too and never
         | even saw the ads on his own site.
        
           | ydant wrote:
           | Good point about the importance of checking your own page
           | with your ad blockers and similar turned off.
           | 
           | It's something I imagine a lot of people would forget - I
           | don't think the thought ever occurred to me for a personal
           | site.
           | 
           | Part of having browsed the web with ad blockers turned on for
           | so long is I tend to forget ads exist for the most part - I
           | definitely forget how pervasive they are.
        
         | craigkerstiens wrote:
         | I love the "this guy" piece... Meanwhile he's been the most
         | public person in academia talking about databases over at least
         | the last 5 years, maybe the last 10. He's not only done an
         | awesome job of talking about foundational pieces of databases,
         | but also examining new databases that have come up over the
         | last 10 years or so. He's course is quite open as well, so it's
         | not just the student base that gets to take advantage -
         | https://15445.courses.cs.cmu.edu/fall2023/
         | 
         | The shirts he's generally helped promote and publicize those
         | companies so he has things to hand out to his students, TAs,
         | graduate students.
        
           | bigdict wrote:
           | not talking about the shirts
        
           | bhickey wrote:
           | Back in grad school he got put on probation a second time
           | after hiring a magician off craigslist for admitted students
           | day. The magician showed up drunk and lost his dove in the
           | building.
        
             | achileas wrote:
             | Wow I like Andy even more now
        
               | bhickey wrote:
               | Here's his first trip to probation:
               | https://www.cs.cmu.edu/~pavlo/slides/graffiti-
               | dc401-oct12.pd...
        
           | snapetom wrote:
           | Yes, the glory of social media. One of the most brilliant
           | minds in databases, and he's "this guy."
        
         | Andoryuuta wrote:
         | Those ads you are seeing above the comments are from the
         | comment service, Disqus. Unless you pay 12$/month, the comment
         | box iframe will inject ads.
         | 
         | These are not ads directly added by "this guy", but rather by
         | his choice of using Disqus for adding comments to the site.
        
         | siva7 wrote:
         | Hate to be that guy but you must be fun at a party.
        
         | quickthrower2 wrote:
         | Lol all the people with adblockers saying "leave him alone
         | there are no ads!"
         | 
         | For extra evil Discus should really pop up an ad blocker
         | blocker.
        
       | adamretter wrote:
       | Personally I love my Redis shirt and my RocksDB shirt - both
       | excellent materials and colours.
        
       | TuringNYC wrote:
       | I am biased since I worked at KineticaDB, but the KineticaDB
       | t-shirts were the best swag I've ever received. I have a closet
       | full of them, 3x/yr across the three years I was there. I wore
       | some socially and fashionably, and others at the gym. They used
       | high-end fabrics comfortable for day and night.
       | 
       | I think about ROI on marketing and this must be incredible w/r/t
       | Employee alignment. Imagine having employees wear your brand day
       | in day out!
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | 3x/yr X 3years == closet full
         | 
         | how small is your closest? i've heard how small apartments can
         | be in places like NYC/SF, but if the space provided for your
         | clothes is filled by 9 t-shirts, i'm going to need to re-
         | evaluate small again.
        
           | Z_Z wrote:
           | leave it to hackernews to debate the semantics of figures of
           | speech
        
           | TuringNYC wrote:
           | The article was on T-Shirts, but I also have 3x * 3 hoodies,
           | Patagonia vests, Fleeces, the works.
           | 
           | The 3x * 3 was meant to convey the variety (we did unique
           | prints each IRL meeting)
        
       | dminor wrote:
       | The 50/50 shirts are great. I've got a stripe shirt that first
       | turned me on to them and I went online and bought a bunch of
       | blank ones in different colors.
       | 
       | My current company found a similar shirt from bella+canvas that
       | is also great. It and the stripe shirt are the only vendor shirts
       | in my regular rotation.
        
         | dylan604 wrote:
         | Wouldn't it just be easier to find 50/50 t-shirts without the
         | branding and not be some tool of a walking billboard rent free?
         | 
         | Edit: Ignore this. Reading comprehension clearly needs work
        
           | cocoflunchy wrote:
           | Isn't that exactly what dminor did?
        
             | dylan604 wrote:
             | You're right. I misread " went online and bought a bunch of
             | blank ones in different colors." by completely reading past
             | "blank ones" and thought they went to get different colors
             | of the branded shirt.
             | 
             | reading comprehension was always a skill set lost on me
        
         | leetrout wrote:
         | I will toss out a second vote for bella+canvas being a modern
         | equivalent to the american apparel of yesteryear.
         | 
         | What is very frustrating is I have 2XL shirts from 2007-2009
         | that fit better than a 4XL from 2022. I've tried to narrow it
         | down to brands and blends and the 50/50 or tri-blend shirts
         | have held their true sizes for longer but somewhere along the
         | way every brand has seemed to have gotten smaller by full
         | inches. In underarmor polos I now buy their tactical line to
         | get the equivalent of their "loose" fit from yesteryear. It is
         | so frustrating and sometimes a huge money waste buying shirts.
         | 
         | The longest lasting shirts in my closet are some Hurley and
         | Billabong shirts from Hot Topic and similar from 2010 or
         | earlier.
         | 
         | For any conference organizers or swag buyers reading this,
         | please start offering up to 4XL in any cheap brand shirts,
         | especially 100% cotton, even if it is preshrunk.
        
         | jprd wrote:
         | > Hanes Beefy-T
         | 
         | My current company has been using bella+canvas of late, and I
         | wear them _all_the_time_ , they are so comfortable that I worry
         | about their durability.
         | 
         | I'm also super, super big into the collars not stretching out.
         | I can't stand that -\\_(tsu)_/-
        
       | ecshafer wrote:
       | I don't like MongoDB as a technology, but I have that T-Shirt and
       | its super comfortable.
        
         | computerfriend wrote:
         | Same, and I didn't realise I was holding the number one best
         | database t-shirt in my wardrobe.
        
         | monknomo wrote:
         | Me too, though mine is getting on towards too threadbare to
         | wear in public
        
       | lai wrote:
       | Does anyone know of a place to buy techie t-shirts made by next
       | level apparel?
        
         | thesh4d0w wrote:
         | You can just buy the screenprinting blanks, unless you really
         | want the logos. I personally get them from wordans.com.
        
       | CoastalCoder wrote:
       | It was so cool to see Mike Stonebraker's face on a t-shirt!
       | 
       | Back in grad school, I was lucky enough to be on a research group
       | that he helped lead. He was totally unpretentious, and at the
       | time I had no idea what a big deal he was in the database world.
        
       | zellyn wrote:
       | For some reason the Google Fiber T-shirt that Google gave out in
       | Atlanta is almost indestructible. I've worn mine routinely for
       | years, and still see other people wearing them sometimes. Not
       | sure exactly what the secret was, but boy would I love to know!
        
         | powerset wrote:
         | Must be the quality of the fiber
        
           | zellyn wrote:
           | touche
        
         | danielvf wrote:
         | I've gotten several Google Fiber t-shirts from a local thrift
         | store, and I can confirm - great shirts! I think they are
         | NextLevel.
        
           | zellyn wrote:
           | NextLevel as a superlative, or
           | https://www.nextlevelapparel.com/?
        
       | jroseattle wrote:
       | It's been 20+ years but I loved this shirt for it's SQL agnostic-
       | ity:
       | 
       | https://www.pinterest.com/pin/lol-code-geek-select-from-user...
       | 
       | (This shows the shirt you could buy once-upon-a-time from
       | thinkgeek, which appears to be no more...)
       | 
       | I believe they used beefy-t brand shirts, which was like the
       | nicest thing you could get for t-shirts at the time. (Personal
       | opinion, don't @ me.)
        
         | leetrout wrote:
         | I think my wife finally tossed all my old thinkgeek shirts. I
         | had a huge collection from my college years including "There
         | are only 10 types of people in this world...", "man love" and
         | "there's not place like 127.0.0.1".
         | 
         | Who has filled this void? I know xkcd had/has some geeky shirts
         | and they shut down too.
        
           | blacksmith_tb wrote:
           | Hmm, I too miss the good ol' days, though I have more old
           | tattered Threadless shirts than ThinkGeek. I suppose
           | something like shirt.woot.com might be where the (nerdy) kids
           | today look?
        
           | easton wrote:
           | Cotton Bureau has some, although they are kind of pricy.
        
         | quickthrower2 wrote:
         | SELECT * FROM SITES WHERE FLAGS LIKE '%BACKBUTTONHIJACKED%'
        
       | mcoliver wrote:
       | My favorite I found on Amazon: I keep all my dad jokes in a
       | Dadabase
        
       | jdelman wrote:
       | I disagree with nearly this entire post, which is fun. I find
       | that the poly blend shirts that the author loves (especially like
       | the MongoDB shirt) are clingy and sweaty. Softness is low on my
       | list of shirt priorities - comfort and fit are high. I don't know
       | how you could see "mongoDB" and not think it is tech, but maybe
       | I'm too mired in tech to have an outsider's perspective. Also,
       | that dark heathered grey color is everywhere in tech shirts right
       | now and it just screams tech. The only one of these with a good
       | design is the Altibase shirt, but it suffers from having the
       | ugliest color.
       | 
       | Give me black, 100% cotton, heavyweight Hanes Beefy-Ts with
       | retro-looking logos.
        
         | djbusby wrote:
         | That shirt, with long sleeves. My go-to for 20 years.
        
         | airstrike wrote:
         | Somewhat off-topic but for those who want a black, 100% cotton
         | and lighterweight t-shirt, IMHO nothing compares to
         | Intimissimi[0]
         | 
         | They run a bit small so I recommend one size larger than your
         | regular size. They're currently on sale from Black Friday so
         | only $14.30 each. (Large Black is now out-of-stock, sorry!)
         | 
         | They also make many other varieties like v necks, long sleeve,
         | modal/cashmere/ etc.
         | 
         |  _(Claimer: I 'm not affiliated or getting a referral from
         | this... I just think they're a lesser known brand in the US)_
         | 
         | __________
         | 
         | 0.
         | https://www.intimissimi.com/us/product/short_sleeve_crew_nec...
        
           | airstrike wrote:
           | Also worth noting that the only review on the website is very
           | accurate despite being a 1-star review: "The quality of
           | material is great. Neck is too low. Too lenghty".
           | 
           | These are exactly the reasons why I like this shirt. Great
           | material, neck is not too tight, probably an inch longer than
           | many other fitted t-shirts, so your underwear isn't showing
           | all the time.
        
             | loxias wrote:
             | Very good to know, now I won't waste $15. ;-)
             | 
             | This whole comment thread is teaching me that apparently
             | there isn't /any/ objective truth when it comes to t shirt
             | comfort.
             | 
             | Before today I figured that was an objective fact that the
             | cheap Hanes ones were unloved -- neck always stretched out,
             | too short and stout.
             | 
             | I'm a fan of LA apparel (aka american apparel) as well as
             | some bella+canvas ones. That stretched out neck just gives
             | me flashbacks to middle school, ugh.
        
               | hodgesrm wrote:
               | > This whole comment thread is teaching me that
               | apparently there isn't any objective truth when it comes
               | to t shirt comfort.
               | 
               | That's true of many things and has been for a long time.
               | "De gustibus non disputandum est," as the Romans said.
               | "It's useless to argue about taste."
        
         | leetrout wrote:
         | Follow on, my biggest frustration with these super thin, clingy
         | shirts is how _everyone_ is showing their nipples through them
         | now.
        
           | CrazyStat wrote:
           | Why does seeing nipples through a tshirt bother you so much?
        
             | 0xbadcafebee wrote:
             | Thelephobia - fear of nipples
        
             | nerdponx wrote:
             | It's just a weird fleshy body part that I'm not used to
             | seeing and generally don't want to see on other people.
             | Also the feeling of a plasticky "technical" shirt on my
             | _own_ nipples is very unpleasant.
        
           | hotnfresh wrote:
           | Well--T-shirts _did_ start out as underwear.
        
         | bubblethink wrote:
         | >I don't know how you could see "mongoDB" and not think it is
         | tech
         | 
         | Depends on the age. MongoDB may not have been such a common
         | name back when the tshirt came out. I have a couple of Palantir
         | t-shirts (american apparel, 100% cotton I think) that have held
         | up over a decade and are really comfortable. One of them says,
         | "Save the shire" and Palantir. I don't think people would have
         | known that it's a tech tshirt back then.
        
           | mulmen wrote:
           | Everything about that organization offends me. They took
           | their name from a series of books they apparently never read.
           | 
           | How is Palantir supposed to save the shire? By trampling the
           | rights of the Hobbits in addition to destroying their
           | environment?
           | 
           | The Palantir show a narrow view of events and lead to their
           | users to ruin. It's like they read the cautionary tale as an
           | instruction manual.
           | 
           | They chose an accurate name for what their product does, but
           | I can't understand how a person with that clarity of thought
           | would decide to actually make one.
        
             | pc86 wrote:
             | This seems unrelated to the comfort and fit of their
             | shirts, but maybe not?
        
             | dbt00 wrote:
             | Palantir is a Quenya word meaning far-seeing. The last
             | successful king of Numenor was Tar-Palantir for example.
             | 
             | The palantiri were corrupted by Sauron and limited to only
             | show things that he wanted you to see. This was extremely
             | well known inside Palantir and was deliberately talked
             | about as something we should all consider the risk of.
             | 
             | The origin story of Palantir was the intelligence failures
             | that led to the 9/11 attacks not being caught. The goal was
             | to prevent the total eradication of civil liberties that
             | would necessarily follow another successful attack of that
             | magnitude.
             | 
             | Palantir's software was rejected by organizations
             | performing dragnet style mass data collection.
             | 
             | This is the most pointless hn comment I'll ever leave, but
             | you shouldn't assume other people are ignorant or acting
             | out of malice.
             | 
             | Also the tshirts were comfy as fuck and extremely well
             | designed.
        
         | ljm wrote:
         | The author calls a hoodie a shirt. I'm not sure I trust their
         | opinion on the fit and comfort of database-branded apparel.
        
           | bitvoid wrote:
           | To be fair, it's not really a hoodie either as I feel that
           | implies it's a sweater or has the thickness of one. It really
           | is just a long sleeve shirt with a hood attached.
        
             | stvltvs wrote:
             | What is the distinction in your mind?
        
           | munificent wrote:
           | I strongly disagree with the claim that it's a hoodie simply
           | because it has a hood. Many hooded garments are not hoodies.
           | To be a hoodie, it must be made out of thicker sweatshirt
           | material.
           | 
           | A long-sleeve T-shirt with a hood is just a long-sleeve
           | T-shirt with a hood.
        
             | mathgeek wrote:
             | Indeed. Anyone who lives near a beach in a warm climate is
             | likely familiar with these long sleeve hooded "tees".
        
         | ourmandave wrote:
         | My holy grail was the Hanes ComfortSoft 100% cotton T.
         | Available in 6-paks at the local Walmart. They start soft and
         | just get better.
         | 
         | But they changed the fabric a while ago and it's not the same.
         | 
         | Still have a few that are getting pretty threadbare.
        
         | a_t48 wrote:
         | Black 100% cotton tends to collect lint and cat hair, doesn't
         | it?
        
         | matsemann wrote:
         | > don't know how you could see "mongoDB" and not think it is
         | tech
         | 
         | I disagree with the author in that I would be comfortable
         | wearing a mongodb shirt in public. Mongoloid is a slur, and at
         | least in Norway it's often shortened to "mongo".
        
           | stvltvs wrote:
           | Interesting, in the States, that term is no longer used very
           | much and was never shortened AFAIK.
        
         | tannhaeuser wrote:
         | > _I don 't know how you could see "mongoDB" and not think it
         | is tech_
         | 
         | Idk but mongo-anything has clearly insulting connotations
         | hasn't it? I'm not a fan of cancelling language at all but
         | still find it very surprising a product with that name could
         | advance that far in enterprise computing. I guess I had hoped
         | the article would explain the joke I was missing here.
         | 
         | Update: ads on a CMU site?
        
       | ifaxmycodetok8s wrote:
       | I had that exact MongoDB shirt. Got it from a hackathon back in
       | 2014. Was such a soft shirt. Loved it.
        
       | throw0101c wrote:
       | _The History Guy_ recently posted  "A Brief History of the T
       | Shirt":
       | 
       | * https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ds_xyrZCSo8
       | 
       | Generally: started out as undershirts, became work shirts
       | (especially in the USN during WW2), and then folks just started
       | wearing them on a daily basis post-war, mostly in 'misfit' /
       | counter-culture groups in the 1950s (especially amongst
       | teenagers), and the hippy culture embracing them in the 1960s.
        
       | danielvf wrote:
       | Like the author, my favorite t-shirt of all time is an early
       | 2010's American Apparel blend shirt, (though mine is a Stripe
       | CTF3 winner shirt.) However, American Apparel changed something
       | mid decade, and I've never been able to get anything close to as
       | comfortable as those shirts.
       | 
       | My current standard shirt are the NextLevel tri-blends, which are
       | almost as good, and can be ordered plain online, or you can find
       | them with all the logos you want in thrift store near techie
       | areas.
        
       | ellisv wrote:
       | Did Andy update something about this post (from 2016)?
        
         | apavlo wrote:
         | No. I've been meaning to do an updated article but I've been
         | unfortunately too busy. A bunch of companies send us shirts to
         | give out to students:
         | 
         | * https://twitter.com/andy_pavlo/status/1659019035818729472
         | 
         | * https://twitter.com/andy_pavlo/status/1335045678876270592
         | 
         | * https://twitter.com/andy_pavlo/status/1125465168023048193
         | 
         | * https://twitter.com/andy_pavlo/status/996191088372322304
         | 
         | * https://twitter.com/andy_pavlo/status/862320227601850368
         | 
         | My highlights from the last 6-7 years:
         | 
         | * DuckDB (European embroidery!)
         | 
         | * Materialize (like Snowflake)
         | 
         | * Yellowbrick (wild designs)
         | 
         | * Timescale (old logo was popular)
         | 
         | -- Andy
        
       | ChrisArchitect wrote:
       | (2016)
        
       | stickfigure wrote:
       | I'm in the print space and this post is weird. I have that exact
       | same green MongoDB on the AA 50/50, as well as a couple other
       | MongoDB shirts printed on different blanks. Somebody picked the
       | design, picked a blank, and printed a batch. Next week somebody
       | else will pick a different blank, maybe even for the same design.
        
       | nofinator wrote:
       | +1 for how great the Snowflake t-shirt is (ranked #3). I wore it
       | a lot during the COVID era, and the poly blend is still soft and
       | has withstood a lot of washing and drying.
       | 
       | When we signed onto Snowflake in 2019, a week later a surprise
       | HUGE box of swag arrived, with a dozen shirts and lots of other
       | things. Our team and corner of the office became The Place To Be
       | for a while.
        
       | sbuttgereit wrote:
       | I've gotten a couple PostgreSQL t-shirts over the years when I
       | volunteered for this or that.
       | 
       | My favorite one is the one for the release of PostgreSQL 8.4.
       | It's simply blue on white and the design is after one of the
       | boxes from the periodic table of the elements: with "Pg" in the
       | middle and (as I recall, it's not in front of me now) and an
       | "atomic weight" of 8.4.
       | 
       | The other was for the release of PostgreSQL 9.0 when replication
       | was introduced. It's a blue shirt with white print. That banner
       | feature is the prominent text on the front and a herd of
       | Elephants charging at the viewer like you might see a stampede of
       | horses do on a western movie's poster.
       | 
       | Good designs celebrating milestone events for the project.
        
       | Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
       | My favorite t-shirt has the Azure logo in the style of the Amazon
       | logo on the front, and the AWS logo in the style of the Azure
       | logo on the back.
       | 
       | https://github.com/jogerj/misbrands/blob/master/azure.svg
       | 
       | https://github.com/jogerj/misbrands/blob/master/aws.svg
        
         | easton wrote:
         | Did you have that made or is there somewhere to buy it?
         | 
         | This is the exact kind of dumb shirt I'm looking for
        
           | Sohcahtoa82 wrote:
           | I had CafePress make it for me.
           | 
           | I originally tried SpreadShirt, but they rejected the design
           | due to copyright.
        
       | erwinkle wrote:
       | I have like 6 of those MongoDB tshirts and they are SO COMFY
        
       | montanalow wrote:
       | If anyone would like a free PostgresML T-shirt, we just did our
       | first run. Feel free to email me with your shipping info and
       | size. It'd also be nice to get to know you a bit if your email
       | address isn't obvious.
        
         | reducesuffering wrote:
         | You need to put your email in your profile. People aren't going
         | to comment it.
        
         | Icathian wrote:
         | Echoing the other commenter, I'd be very interested but I can't
         | find an email address to ping you.
         | 
         | I'm a database geek and would happily rep your stuff!
        
       | geophile wrote:
       | I worked at Akiban for nearly its entire history, and I don't
       | think I even _saw_ one of their t-shirts.
        
       | xbar wrote:
       | None of those compare to my Legend of ZDLRA: A Link Between
       | Databases shirt but I'm grateful to have a forum to review such
       | things.
        
       | turtlebits wrote:
       | Tableau used to give employees t-shirts multiple times a year (I
       | had at least 15 by the time I left). I had a favorite I'm now
       | reminded used "Next Level" shirts. Time to go buy a bunch of
       | their blank t-shirts.
        
       | DonHopkins wrote:
       | I used to have a really nice tie dyed Microsoft DirectX t-shirt
       | that I got as swag from the Microsoft booth at CGDC the year it
       | was released, that I loved to wear to Linux and open source
       | software conferences, to make people's heads explode.
        
       | nlavezzo wrote:
       | I'm partial to my FoundationDB shirts :)
        
       | _dan wrote:
       | I have a MongoDB shirt of the same vintage and I can confirm they
       | are indeed soft AF.
        
       | harrisonjackson wrote:
       | Before clicking through I had that mongodb shirt in mind as my
       | personal favorite.
       | 
       | I got a few of them at aws reinvent in like 2012.
       | 
       | 2nd favorite is a Cassandra one of similar make.
        
       | achileas wrote:
       | Still waiting for a vendor to hand out some branded y-back tanks
        
       | laxd wrote:
       | PostgreSQL? And OracleDB as a joke christmas present?
        
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       (page generated 2023-11-27 23:00 UTC)