My favorite database shirts | Hacker News Reader

My favorite database shirts

cs.cmu.edu

240 pointsk-rus128 comments

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

Did you have that made or is there somewhere to buy it?

This is the exact kind of dumb shirt I’m looking for

I had CafePress make it for me.

I originally tried SpreadShirt, but they rejected the design due to copyright.

This repo, and the other forks of its original which have even more "misbrands", are going to have me ordering some custom sticker sheets here shortly, thanks for sharing!

The AWS/Azure and Java/JavaScript ones are good, but the Vim/VS Code one is gold.

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.

That shirt, with long sleeves. My go-to for 20 years.

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...

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.

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.

> 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."

> "It's useless to argue about taste... or T-shirt comfort."

I updated your statement for the remainder of modern history. ^_^

FWIW I don't think Intimissimi shirts have a quote-unquote "stretched out neck", just a tiny bit of extra room... I hadn't even noticed it until I read the review

Follow on, my biggest frustration with these super thin, clingy shirts is how _everyone_ is showing their nipples through them now.

Why does seeing nipples through a tshirt bother you so much?

Thelephobia - fear of nipples

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.

Well—T-shirts did start out as underwear.

Nipple covers are a thing

>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.

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.

This seems unrelated to the comfort and fit of their shirts, but maybe not?

I have been in the same room as someone wearing a Palantir shirt and I was uncomfortable.

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.

They signed a contract with the city of New Orleans!

I don’t doubt the good intentions. I do question the outcome.

The author calls a hoodie a shirt. I’m not sure I trust their opinion on the fit and comfort of database-branded apparel.

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.

What is the distinction in your mind?

Tees are made of a tee shirt material like jersey knit while hoodies are made from a sweatshirt material like terry cloth or a cotton fleece.

The same distinction between a long sleeve t-shirt and a crewneck sweater. I don't know how they're made, but my layman distinction would be "thickness".

The distinction being a hoddie is a sweatshirt with a hood. As opposed to a long sleeve shirt with a hood. Sweatshirts are thicker. Calling it a hoodie would be like calling a long sleeve shirt a swetashirt because they have the same silhouette.

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.

Indeed. Anyone who lives near a beach in a warm climate is likely familiar with these long sleeve hooded “tees”.

As someone who lives near a beach in a warm climate... I've never seen anyone wear one of these nor have I seen them for sale in stores.

I can't imagine when I'd wear one either - if I want protection from the sun I'll wear a hat or sunscreen - not a hood.

I wear poly ones that are spf50 all the time when I’m fishing so I don’t need to worry about applying sunscreen to large parts of my body multiple times a day.

I typically have really short hair, so I wear one with the hood on when it's chilly inside, but not so chilly that I want the heater on or want to wear a sweater.

My whole climbing crew has made the switch from hats and sunscreen to sunshirts. They fit under a helmet, and they feel less cancery than repeatedly slathering on some goo and crossing your fingers. It's one thing if you're free to roam about to a more comfortable area, but if you're stuck on belay duty on the sunny part of the face, you'll be happier with a sunshirt.

And then you're used to it, and you start wearing them elsewhere too, because why bother with lesser protection?

They may be more popular at higher altitudes than at the beach though. Beach folk have a bit more atmosphere protecting them.

Almost every serious fisherman that I know or watch on YouTube wears long sleeve SPF shirts with hoods.

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.

What you want now is Hanes Premium slim fit, which is a cotton/poly blend similar to the old ComfortSoft.

Watch out because some Hanes Premium are 100% cotton, which is not what you want at least at this price point.

Black 100% cotton tends to collect lint and cat hair, doesn’t it?

> 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".

Interesting, in the States, that term is no longer used very much and was never shortened AFAIK.

I’m pretty sure it was shortened, but as a name for a character

In "Blazing Saddles" ...

Is that a racial slur (i.e., Asian), or about Down syndrome? The latter was used in the UK many years ago, I've not heard it for 25 years (?), so "mongo" wouldn't raise an eyebrow here now.

In France, that would be related to Down syndrome. Technically, in these parts it would be "mongol", with an l, like the people of Mongolia.

AFAICT it's not exactly used against people with actual Down syndrome, but rather as a synonym for "idiot" and the like.

It's kinda both. Mongoloid here used to refer to people with Downs, by comparing them to the (non existent) Asian race of Mongoloids due to both often having eyes with epicanthic fold. Of course I didn't know this when using it as a kid back in the days, and I've luckily not heard it used for ages, but I think all of my peers would remember it if used on a t-shirt.

I wouldn't be comfortable wearing a MongoDB shirt in public either. I mean, it's awful technology.

> 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?

According to the founders "mongo" came from "humongous" not "mongoloid". Additionally, "Mongo" has never had insulting conotations in America, as far as I know. Also, if you weren't aware, Mongo is an ethnicity and a language, should we force them to change the name?

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.

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

Isn't that exactly what dminor did?

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

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.

> 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 ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

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!

Must be the quality of the fiber

touché

I've gotten several Google Fiber t-shirts from a local thrift store, and I can confirm - great shirts! I think they are NextLevel.

NextLevel as a superlative, or https://www.nextlevelapparel.com/?

Yup. I’ve had one of the North Carolina Google Fiber shirts for well over a decade.

I walked by the office a few weeks ago. It’s vacant and looked trashed inside. There’s a metaphor there.

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.)

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.

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?

Cotton Bureau has some, although they are kind of pricy.

    SELECT * FROM SITES WHERE FLAGS LIKE '%BACKBUTTONHIJACKED%'

My favorite I found on Amazon: I keep all my dad jokes in a Dadabase

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.

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.

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.

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.

I don't like MongoDB as a technology, but I have that T-Shirt and its super comfortable.

Same, and I didn't realise I was holding the number one best database t-shirt in my wardrobe.

Me too, though mine is getting on towards too threadbare to wear in public

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.

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.

You need to put your email in your profile. People aren't going to comment it.

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!

If you ship the Philippines, would love to get one. First time to hear about PostgresML. Email add in profile.

While I don't have a MongoDB shirt. I do happen to have a pair of MongoDB Shoes (from the Vans brand). They're quite good and probably some of the best swag I've gotten from a tech brand.

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!

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.

leave it to hackernews to debate the semantics of figures of speech

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)

Cypress, the test runner, was offering up a free t-shirt if you attended any webinar in 2019. The test engineer on my team at the time got us all in on leaving the webinar open in the background. We got a full team set of Cypress shirts! Was the uniform for demos for the next couple sprints haha

I still have a couple (we did it multiple times) and actually really like them. Same 50/50 blend as the mongo shirt.

+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.

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.

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.

MongoDB deserves credit with bucking the trend of sans-serif fonts that it seems like every tech company has gone with. Their choices of colors too - brown and green are earthy and unique in the tech landscape.

Very bold choices by them and a reflection on their direction of being a very different type of database.

I had that exact MongoDB shirt. Got it from a hackathon back in 2014. Was such a soft shirt. Loved it.

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.

If you like Ruby, there's a bunch of nice shirts (and more) at https://popruby.com

I got that MongoDB shirt at a conference in Seattle about 10-13 years ago as he stated. He ain't kidding. It's a great shirt.

Now I gotta go find it in my closet...

I have like 6 of those MongoDB tshirts and they are SO COMFY

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.

Did Andy update something about this post (from 2016)?

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

I worked at Akiban for nearly its entire history, and I don't think I even saw one of their t-shirts.

If you're a leftist of any kind, my favorite is this parody shirt called OurSQL: https://www.redbubble.com/i/t-shirt/OurSQL-red-and-yellow-by...

Personally I love my Redis shirt and my RocksDB shirt - both excellent materials and colours.

I have a MongoDB shirt of the same vintage and I can confirm they are indeed soft AF.

Never realized how much I would like a datomic shirt until now.

Still waiting for a vendor to hand out some branded y-back tanks

PostgreSQL? And OracleDB as a joke christmas present?

I'm partial to my FoundationDB shirts :)

> "Promoting your database system or start-up with a shirt is almost as important as getting the thing to actually run. As I've told my students several times, in the world of databases you don't sell the steak, you sell the sizzle...A good shirt can get people to feel like your DBMS is going to solve all of their application's database problems."

I can't tell if this is sarcasm or serious, but either way is a sad reflection on the state of the DB industry.

I have that same MongoDB shirt from FOSDEM 2010.

I remember it vividly as that year, the infantilization of developers by companies was at its peak.

MongoDB had a stand with hired girls in pump up bras distributing tee shirts. Google had its stand with the same girls proposing some "funny quizz" to win some blinking LED toy and an interview slot.

(2016)

Does anyone know of a place to buy techie t-shirts made by next level apparel?

You can just buy the screenprinting blanks, unless you really want the logos. I personally get them from wordans.com.

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