
Show HN: I've always wanted a Y Combinator shirt, so I made one. - apgwoz
http://fold.sigusr2.net/2011/02/y-combinator-in-ycombinator.html
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Homunculiheaded
When I saw the title my first thought was "too bad it won't be a shirt of the
actual y combinator", I was pleasantly surprised, will probably be purchasing
one soon

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rokhayakebe
I thought the opposite: "Wow, cool someone made a orange HN shirt. I am going
to buy one right this minute if he sells them."

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shii
I've always wanted a bright orange shirt (#ff6600) like the default topcolor
with a nice large Y on the front.

I'm wondering if there is a trademark that would prevent someone from
designing and selling one (even after explicitly stating no
affiliation/connection with YC.)

Wikipedia Commons[1] says Jessica designed it and has trademark restrictions
however...

EDIT:

Followed the rabbit-hole and found this: <http://ycombinator.com/legal.html>
which states _This image of our logo is released under the Creative Commons
Attribution 2.5 license._

..I unfortunately am not familiar with that license, but after reading up on
it[2], it would seem fair game, as long as the person(s) gave attribution to
Jessica/YC.

Anyone have any counterpoints/corollaries to prove me utterly out of touch
with everything, or am I correct in my understanding here?

[1]: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Y_Combinator_Logo_400.gif>

[2]: <http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.5/>

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thematt
They're sold out at the moment, but I bought one here:
<http://hackertees.com/>

~~~
shii
Yeah, but I'm talking BIG Y...like whole front of t-shirt Y. And maybe even
posthardcore-band-merch Y. Or even grunge-style Y.

But the Y must be massive.

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chwahoo
Cool idea, I'd be interested in something like that too, although not out of
any implied association with YC (the VC firm). More because I'm a student in a
PL group :).

However, there's something about the font/position of the logo...err..
expression on the shirt that doesn't quite appeal to me. Maybe I'll have to
design one too!

~~~
apgwoz
> However, there's something about the font/position of the logo...err..
> expression on the shirt that doesn't quite appeal to me. Maybe I'll have to
> design one too!

The font is FF Meta, the same font used in the Y Combinator (VC) logo.

It's unfortunate that the Y-Combinator is so long. I tried to kern so it would
fit in a single line but be big enough to see on a shirt. Not sure that I
succeeded exactly; maybe not based on your comment. :)

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chwahoo
I haven't seen the shirt that inspired you, so my opinion probably isn't so
useful.

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apgwoz
I think I've seen people affiliated with YC with a shirt that just has the
orange box with a Y on it.

Other YC shirts I know of: "make something people want", and when you get
acquired, you get "i made something people want"

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TeMPOraL
First thought: "Yo dawg. I herd you like Y-Combinator. So we put a lambda in
yo lambda, so you can recurse while u recurse."

~~~
Locke1689
Recur! To recurse is to curse again! ;)

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ihodes
For those interested, I'd skip the baby-tutorials to the Y fpc and just look
at the "math":
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_point_combinator#Y_combin...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fixed_point_combinator#Y_combinator)

Once you see that you just end up applying the function to itself repeatedly,
it makes a lot more sense. It's also 5 lines to read, instead of paragraphs.

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zach
I would prefer a shirt with the seven primitive operators of Lisp myself.

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chwahoo
Seven?!! ...so inelegant compared to the two rules needed for evaluating
lambda calculus ;)

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acangiano
For those interested, that's a $5.60 markup. Pretty honest IMHO.

EDIT: I was mistaken. It's a different type of shirt, so the markup is even
less!

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apgwoz
Actually it's not. It's 17.40 base price for the American Apparel shirt (which
I made so I could buy, since that's my preference), so it's a $2.60 markup.

~~~
acangiano
Even at $5.60 it would have been totally fair. Kudos to you for making it
available to others for so little.

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apgwoz
It took about 30 minutes to do--and, that long because I had to trace a few
glyphs from FF Meta (the font) in Inkscape, since I don't own it. I'd be
absolutely thrilled if enough people bought one so that mine is free, but, I'm
not expecting that to happen.

The other shirts in that shop were marked up to donate to random open source
projects. I think all together, I maybe gave $30-40 away from those sales?

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ot
I always wanted to make a quine t-shirt, something like

    
    
      A t-shirt with the following sentence followed by its quotation: "A t-shirt with the following sentence followed by its quotation:" 
    

but the line is too long to fit confortably in a t-shirt (and it's so nerd
even I would not wear it)

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kevinburke
Any chance I could get one in orange instead of black?

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apgwoz
You could, but the type is on an orange background, so I'd have to upload a
just white design, which I can't do at the moment. If you want, ping me and
I'll do it later. (my email is in my profile)

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ubasu
From the pictures, it felt that the y-combinator is placed a little high up on
the shirt - might work better place to place it lower.

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ztan
I agree. I also think it should be some what lowered.

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grayhairmomma
Just bought a red one in Small. I'm a girl, BTW. Great work. Thanks !

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vaksel
best to buy this before he gets sued for trademark infringement

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apgwoz
How would this be trademark infringement? Can you trademark math?

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vaksel
I don't see why not...you can trademark a fruit(apple) and a a color(pink).

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sthatipamala
Sure, he does infringe by using the color and the font of YC. But the YC gang
know better than to shut down their loyal fanbase.

~~~
dfranke
And even if they _were_ that silly, I'd be pretty confident that a fair use
defense (parody) would hold up here, if something so ridiculous were actually
to go to court.

