T-Shirt Printing API - <AUTHOR> https://www.shirts.io/ <comment><USER2> I really like the concept but I don't understand why anyone in tech would want to be in the bulk tshirt manufacturing business. I used to be in the tshirt business: albeit we used to make high end stuff which was sold to premium retailers. As I see it, the inefficiencies in the business do not come from the ordering part. There are plenty of places where you can order tshirts. The really hard problem to solve is the manufacturing one.

Second, I don't get how you would actually make real money through this. Most of this business is low margin, labor intensive. In any low low margin business you make money through scale. However, pretty much all of the high quantity stuff is done overseas and then shipped to the US, because even then it is cheaper. We used to airship stuff all the time (a lot more expensive than boat) and it would still ending up costing us a lot less than doing it in the US

I don't know why people keep making solutions for tshirt manufacturing. It is effectively a price-conscious B2B model.

<comment><USER3> Why would we get into this business? Because of shirts like this: [http://i.imgur.com/QNQqXnD.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/QNQqXnD.jpg)

In all seriousness, we really dislike the inefficiencies of this industry ourselves. We used to contract out our print work, but we opened up 3 facilities (California, Pennsylvania, and Indiana) to improve on the quality and efficiency issues in the industry.

This is an industry where everyone uses the same equipment, same consumables, and same method of decoration, and still charge high prices because everyone else does. We differentiate ourselves by having the technology and processes (from the manufacturing side to the ordering side) and scale to move orders in and out more efficiently than anyone else.

<comment><USER2> Yea see then it makes sense to me, sort of. If you have your own manufacturing ability then for sure go for it.

However, I will still say that most of the money to be made is in actually selling your own designs.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> Imagine if you could tie this api into a game, you level up your character and get a t-shirt with all the new equips/stats to show off to your friends...

<comment><USER5> Long ago, for many games, Activision would award an embroidered patch to any player who beat a certain score. Usually the player would photograph the screen and mail it to Activision.

</comment></comment><comment><USER6> Bash Script + cronjob + Google Image Search + shirts.io = random new shirt every week?

<comment><USER3> Raymond from Shirts.io here.

Shirts of the week? Done: [http://imgur.com/PWUsJ5s](http://imgur.com/PWUsJ5s)

For anyone looking to start a new t-shirt company using Shirts.io, we can give $100 in account credit for you to get started. Just email me: raymond at shirts dot io.

<comment><USER7> Hey Ramond, cool site!

tiny bug in FF/Win7 on Get Started: [http://i.imgur.com/cwSd78R.png](http://i.imgur.com/cwSd78R.png)

also if i have an old t-shirt that I want to restore it, is that legal? they no longer make it and it is _precious_ to me since highschool (10 years old!)

I kinda like the faded ink (/hipster), but the shirt it self is falling apart!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> Interesting- we are starting to see more and more APIs that interface with real physical objects. Is this the new advent of APIs?

Am i going to be able to purchase a pizza delivery whilst printing a shirt and having my car unlock for the car wash guy all from my phone as I'm heading home.

What other real life APIs are there available atm?

<comment><USER9> An API for general printing (e.g. business cards, letterheads, brochures, posters, etc.) is desperately needed. I can't seem to find any commercial printer that offers an API.

<comment><USER10> For business cards, stickers, greeting cards, labels, etc Moo has an API [http://us.moo.com/api/](http://us.moo.com/api/)

I haven't used the API but I've bought business cards from Moo and they were great.

<comment><USER9> Thank you so much. The API does seem quite complex (it looks like you need to go through dozens of steps to print). I wish they could take Stripe's approach and simplify it somewhat. This seems like a great opportunity for someone to disrupt this market.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Cool thing, have an idea that I would like to try with this. However, the following part turns me off quite much: >"Shipments going internationally are subject to a charge of $8.50 per garment." Which means that if one order for $3.32 becomes $11.82? That's pretty much, even for international shipping...

Anything like this within Europe?

<comment><USER12> Spreadshirt has an API. But they are more focussed on small orders instead of bulk.

<comment><USER11> As I understand shirts.io, they're also focused on small orders. Otherwise an API would be overkill, no?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> But are the shirts any good? No mention of material or examples of how one might look.

<comment><USER3> Raymond from Shirts.io here.

For anyone interested in seeing our print quality, we can give out $100 in free account credits for you to print some samples. Just send me an email: raymond at shirts dot io.

Here's a shirt we just printed: [http://i.imgur.com/PHa4hBL.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/PHa4hBL.jpg) Here's me wearing a shirts.io shirt: [http://i.imgur.com/Jcsq2uf.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/Jcsq2uf.jpg)

<comment><USER14> Hey Raymond,

I have a fairly specific question. My interest in T-shirts has become refined in recent years. I only like T-shirts that are super soft. Have you guys tested a niche of super soft T's at all? I might be interested in using the API if I could brand a custom T-shirt site focused first of all on the softness of the T, and if you could guarantee the softness.

<comment><USER3> You'd be looking for a ringspun cotton or a triblend t-shirt from a high-end brand like American Apparel or Canvas. It all depends on how much you want to pay.

American Apparel and Canvas are on the high end of the market. They each offer both ringspun and triblend styles. You're looking at $3 to $4 per shirt over the cost of a basic cotton tee.

If you want a "value" soft tee, you should consider the Gildan Softstyle or Hanes Nano T. You can get these for only $1 to $2 over the cost of a basic tee, and you'll still feel a noticeable difference.

<comment><USER15> The AA tri-blends are my go-to shirt. A service like this would be well worth it if they offered either this or the Summer shirt over the normal 2001 / 2102.

<comment><USER16> Canvas triblend is another option, usually cheaper than the AA tri-blend and has a more "solid" feel, while still being soft.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> Very buttony and well designed. Good MVP. I notice you can order 10 shirts and send them to 10,000 locations, though.

</comment><comment><USER9> Love this. Any plans for other print items too like business cards, letterheads, etc?

An API that serves not just T-shirt printing, but other printing as well will win a lot of business IMHO.

</comment><comment><USER18> Shirts.io logo uses the same image as the Stripe 'cloud' but inverted on the y-axis

They also have suspiciously similar UI/UX with similar color schemes. The random green sign up button mouse over is an obvious attempt at 'throwing you off' from the idea that the design was copied.

<comment><USER19> There is only one Cloud Icon in the Entire Universe: [http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ThereIsOnlyOneCloudIconInTheEn...](http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ThereIsOnlyOneCloudIconInTheEntireUniverse.aspx)

</comment></comment><comment><USER20> There is an issue on your pricing page.

Your font-awesome icons are not loading correctly for me on Mint/FF21

[http://i.imgur.com/NmO1yX4.png](http://i.imgur.com/NmO1yX4.png)

However it works fine on Chromium.

Love the idea but I'm in the UK so that rules it out for me (shipping kills it).

</comment><comment> e-dard Just an FYI regarding your documentation, of example GET requests (e.g., [https://www.shirts.io/docs/quote_reference/](https://www.shirts.io/docs/quote_reference/))

You can describe GET requests as follows with cURL, which I find a bit smarter :-)

      curl -G https://www.shirts.io/api/v1/quote/ \
      -d "api_key=APIKEY" \
      -d "garment[0][product_id]=3" \
      -d "garment[0][color]=White" \
      -d "garment[0][sizes][med]=100" \
      -d "garment[0][sizes][lrg]=50"

In cases where you need to url-encode the parameter, you can switch out -d for --data-urlencode

</comment><comment><USER21> I was about to yawn, until I saw the priceing. That's pretty good.

</comment><comment><USER22> There's a company in my hometown of Albuquerque that does something similar called Inksoft [http://www.inksoft.com/](http://www.inksoft.com/) except, I believe Inksoft strictly offers software to companies that sell clothing like shirts. I don't fully understand the garment industry, but from talking with the owners, they make a pretty penny.

</comment><comment><USER23> Is everything completely automated or the API is just for placing the order?

Would be cool if the API server is connected to the printing machine controller, packaging machine controller, and some FedEx physical logistics system. When an order is placed, everything is automated, from printing to packaging to shipping. That would save a lot, and more importantly, it's gonna be so cool :)

<comment><USER24> \+ Quadcopter delivery for the last mile.

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I have a weekend project that is in "private beta" (still a few weekends from launch) that combines computer generated art and one-off T-shirts. I've been working with [http://printaura.com/](http://printaura.com/).

I like the idea of coding up adapters so we can switch fulfillment providers if we needed to.

</comment><comment><USER26> Your API console isn't working for me (the Execute buttons do nothing) in Chrome. My JS console shows:

        Uncaught SyntaxError: Unexpected token o   jquery.min.js:3

after each click. Also, the quote generator on /pricing only generates a price if Front Colors is >0 (it doesn't work for a back-only print).

</comment><comment><USER27> I think you have a real possibility to make large amounts of money from water cooler jokes alone. This could make big money with office inner circles. Also, the random funny, odd, and cool imgur pic-of-the-week shirt could be very lucrative. Just think of all those college and high school kids wearing the Reddit best-of each week.

Good work!

</comment><comment><USER28> Design note: that slider is awkward. There's no indication that it's moving until it hits a discrete point.

</comment><comment><USER29> I wish this service was around 5 years ago when I was going through the hell of designing a Silverlight interface for tshirt logo / text placement. The customer was such an a __I would have pull my app, launched it myself with this service as the fulfillment end. Nice work guys, best of luck with it.

</comment><comment><USER30> Spreadshirt has had an API for a while now, spawning things like [http://zufallsshirt.de/](http://zufallsshirt.de/) (German, random shirt per visit, you either buy it or consign it to oblivion.)

</comment><comment><USER31> I'm wondering if you could add a page describing all of the 'garment' options! I like what I see otherwise, but am not familiar with what each of them are, and there's no where on the website I can find that info.

</comment><comment><USER32> When will international shipping be supported? Australia in particular.

</comment><comment><USER33> Your pricing calculator doesn't work on mobile well. Was not able to select 1 tshirt on iPhone. Maybe add a manual text input for size as well? Looking forward to using this though.

</comment><comment><USER34> May be its time for me to finish my weekend project. [http://tshirts.imomin.com/](http://tshirts.imomin.com/)

<comment><USER24> What exactly is the goal of this project?

<comment><USER34> I wanted to play with Fabric.js and may be sell gravatar tees.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> Using square brackets is silly because you won't be able to ever put API parameters in the URL.

By using semicolons (a la matrix parameters) or commas you could eliminate that.

</comment><comment><USER36> Can one product be part of multiple categories? Will (product_id, category_id) tuple ever change? Can I cache the ids and use it after sometime?

</comment><comment><USER37> this looks great, i just have one question. How are you able to make a profit by selling 100,000 1 color shirts, plus shipping and handling, and blank for 2.60?

shipping along wold be 2.60, not to mention the cost of the shirt which is at least 3.00... i would love to use you guys, just not sure you have thought out your pricing

<comment><USER3> 1\. We print hundreds of thousands of shirts every month, so our cost of goods is much lower.

2\. The base price includes free shipping to a single address. If you want to split the shipment to multiple addresses, each additional address costs $3. So if you want to ship each shirt to a different address, just add $3 to the per- shirt price.

<comment><USER37> that makes sense, i did forget to add the pricing for different addresses... thanks for the reply

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER38> The call to action lands me on a sign up form. Apparently I can get only very limited information before I sign up.

<comment><USER39> If you scroll down a few more pixels, you'll see links to the API documentation ([https://www.shirts.io/docs/overview](https://www.shirts.io/docs/overview)) and their capabilities ([https://www.shirts.io/capabilities/](https://www.shirts.io/capabilities/))

</comment></comment><comment><USER40> so is this like [https://www.startupthreads.com/](https://www.startupthreads.com/) where you can integrate with them to send t-shirts to clients or community members?

<comment><USER16> We (StartupThreads) also have an api in private beta that companies have used to ship swag. A little different than this but this looks cool.

<comment><USER41> Agreed. This looks like a lot of fun. My company (a traditional swag distributor) is working on an ecommerce site at SwagExpert.com. It's being built using real-time data on almost a million products (including apparel) that comes from an industry provider's API.

I like how this not only provides the product data but a mechanism for manufacturing and fulfillment as well. Very clever.

Good to see you here, Frank. We met a few months ago at SXSW and I rock the shirt you gave me regularly.

<comment><USER16> Nice! I have rocked the "Keep Calm and Swag on" shirt as well. Will catch up on email.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> The Stripe and CardFlight of selling t-shirts.. I like it!

</comment><comment><USER43> This looks like it's an API for ooshirts.com

<comment><USER44> It is! It's said that on their footer :)

</comment></comment><comment><USER45> Here come the teespring competitors.

</comment><comment><USER46> You guys should talk to Teespring.

</comment><comment><USER47> Stripe wants their web design back

<comment><USER48> ... really not sure where to go with this particular comment.

shirts.io would appear to be using Bootstrap, which will give a common popular minimalist style to their site - of which Stripe is a good example (but I don't think they use Bootstrap).

However, I'm not really seeing anything on their site that immediately screams 'We cribbed our design from Stripe'.

Do you have something you can point to?

<comment><USER49> I thought of Stripe too.

1\. Logo looks similar-ish 2\. API functionality in a similar place 3\. Similarly proportioned "reasons to love us"

Not a bad thing -- Stripe's design is good.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER50> Do you ship internationally?

<comment><USER51> They do, but it's an extra 8.95

<comment><USER50> Thanks!

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> What is this?

</comment><comment><USER53> good idea!</comment>


Where Have All the Angels Gone? - <AUTHOR> https://tomtunguz.com/where-have-all-the-angels-gone/ <comment><USER3> At least for me, a big part of it has to do with the shift almost entirely to convertible notes.

When I made my first angel investment ~10 years ago almost every opportunity was priced. Now almost everything is a note (either with a very high cap or no cap and a small discount).

I like to know what I'm buying.

And if a startup is saying they're going to grow 1000x in 18 months but wants to cap my return over that timeframe at 20% that seems like a raw deal considering the very high risk that they won't be able to raise at all.

I applaud them for being able to get it done. But it's been 2 years since I've made my last angel investment. I've allocated that money to stocks instead.

<comment><USER4> What kind of net worth should you have before considering angel investing?

<comment><USER5> > _What kind of net worth should you have before considering angel investing?_

Thumb in the air, angel investments should be no more than 2 to 3% of your liquid (sellable, with minimal price disruption, within 90 days) investable assets. (One should also be an accredited investor.)

So if you're cutting a $10k cheque, you should have $500k socked away in liquid investments and $1 million in total assets. If you're cutting two $25k cheques, you should be investing out of a portfolio of ~$2 to 3 million.

<comment><USER6> You probably want 10 or 20x of that. Assuming your bets are uncorrelated and all have the same standard deviation, the standard deviation (volatility) of your portfolio is going to be:

stddev_portfolio = sqrt(n)*stddev where n = # of investments

Personally, I don't think I would be comfortable with the risk unless n > 25 or something around that.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> I think it's likely attributable to financial returns of angels.

One of my business school professors was a prolific angel investor. I asked him about his returns and he laughed. He said it wasn't about the returns - <USER2> the time he cashed out, he was so diluted (or enough failed) that the ROI was far less than an index fund.

What it did give him was social capital - to say he was an angel in a famous unicorn was immensely valuable to him.

Unless you're already rich, social capital doesn't pay the bills.

</comment><comment><USER8> As angel rounds can very well be 100% private deals, I have to question how complete this data is.

I can certainly believe that in the "Startupland", as they call it, seed rounds are changing. But that isn't the whole industry. Because at the same time, there is growing pushback against VC investment for small software companies, and growing pushback against the "grow fast or fail" mentality.

I know of multiple angel-backed projects just in my small town over the past couple years, that have zero news coverage. Admittedly, my small town is a bedroom community for a tech area, so we have more than your average number of software professionals here. Still, if you tell me the half dozen projects going on in my small town is outpacing the entire state of Texas... I just do not find that plausible.

</comment><comment><USER9> I don't have any data, but I feel the sentence "Angel investors, on the other hand, seem either to be walking away or raising an institutional seed fund of their own." is one of the likely explanations.

In Denmark (where I live), most angel investors seem to have syndicated together in collectives, micro-funds and other forms of investment vehicles. This reduces the number of angel rounds on paper, but I guess a lot of the angel investments are still hidden in small funds.

One hypothesis is that it could be due to the increased size of the first investment rounds for new startups. I do believe it will make it harder for the very interesting and risky cases to succeed because instead of convincing one visionary individual, they have to convince a small fund with a management structure, a board, and an associate.

</comment><comment><USER5> Funny question to be asked on a Y Combinator property. Angel investors were the cottage industry financial gears of the early venture landscape. As Silicon Valley matured, the factories ( _i.e._ Y Combinator _et al_ ) got into gear. These "factories" can offer better terms--overall--in large part through their scale ( _e.g._ alumni networks, demo day, _et cetera_ ).

It's a classic maturation story. Angels still have an edge in domains with philanthropic credentials or where such scaling advantages don't present themselves, _e.g._ in niche technologies or geographies.

</comment><comment><USER10> I stopped angel investing when the "ask" jumped from $25k to $250k. At $250k I'd just as soon be an LP in a fund and spread the risk (and let the GPs do the work).

<comment><USER11> That's surprising to me. I've been doing 2-3 angel investments/year in Silicon Valley (while being a full-time VC), and I've never personally seen anyone ask for a $250k min check at seed stage. FWIW all of my investments are $10k (the max that my fund allows me to invest on the side), and I don't get pushback on that 90% of the time.

On a slightly different note, minimums are rarely set in stone. If someone says the min is $100k and you come back with "ah that's a bummer, I love your company and think I can help with X and Y, but I can only afford $25k," there's a good chance that suddenly the minimum will drop to $25k just for you. At least that has been my personal experience.

<comment><USER12> What can you possibly do with $10k or even $25k in the Valley? How can these kind of money can be productively used?

<comment><USER11> It's less about a single $10k check. I think a better way to think about it is: what could you do if you get 10-20 angels to each give you a $10k-$50k check (for a total of $400k or something like that). Then you'd have enough capital for a few people to work full time for a year, plus you'd have 10-20 individuals who are eager to help you in different ways.

<comment><USER13> What does the startup give up to get the $10k check? 1% equity or something?

<comment><USER11> Closer to 0.1-0.2 percent. Maybe a little more if it's very very early.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> That's normal, angels being commonplace 10 years ago was just a sign of industry's immaturity. Angels deal with post-tax, personal money. They are naturally handicapped. They existed only as long as the field was considered uninteresting for institutional players.

</comment><comment><USER14> As a founder on the ground even in late 2015 (NYC), it was very hard to get a single angel check when we were trying to raise $500k. Ended up raising $2m from funds instead - which was the right thing but also very weird.

Fellow founders with companies that would have traditionally been at more "angel" friendly stages have had a similar experience recently - either funds invest or they can't raise more than $150k. Less true in smaller markets.

</comment><comment><USER13> What we need are angel bootcamps to train up more angels. Anyone can be an angel investor, but knowing how to be an angel is the real trick.

<comment><USER15> No self-respecting entrepreneur would talk to bootcamp angels! At a minimum, an M.S. in angel investing from a Top 10 school or preferably a PhD with at least 5 years of investing in FAANG should be the minimal angel qualifications.

<comment><USER16> That can't be right. The Angel Bootcamp told me companies need Angels and there is a shortage. They said I'd even get their course at a discount as long as I gave half my profits to them for the first 2 years after I graduate.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> I think part of it is the increase in cost. I've spoken with quite a few VCs and Micro-Fund managers and generally been told a seed round is $250k minimum.

I can't see many angel investors investing that much. This is when I can relatively easily raise that

<comment><USER18> I wonder if this is more accurate for what people are pursuing as businesses as well where the up front costs are just higher. Trying to start a Reddit or Facebook class site just needs a working server and some basics, where as a lot of the gig economy ideas/things-as-a-service ideas like Uber or Blue Apron need more up front capital that can't be solved by just trading sweat for marketing/growth. Not because that this is the best business idea but I can imagine a lot of proposals are trying to chase similar things. I'm not saying that those who may be considered copycats are wrong just that their upfront costs might be higher. A business starting out that is similar to an Uber or Blue Apron kills its growth if it has no money.

I have also been hearing about people that are chasing WeWork as well so there is an upfront cost of facility that is almost explicitly what-not-to-do from the prior generation startup handbook: don't have an office. If an office is the product, then what? You do need a bit more money.

It definitely feels like the last few years of startups are chasing very different goals that an influx of $25k (as suggested here) isn't going to help enough to solve the overhead of getting that $25k.

</comment></comment><comment><USER19> I wonder if it's because 95% of angels lost their money during the peak periods so have moved on to other pursuits.

</comment><comment><USER20> Hm, neither the article, nor anyone yet in the comments, has mentioned crowdfunding, a.k.a. Kickstarter et al...

This article is old, but shows CF passing angel four+ years ago:

[https://medium.com/startup-grind/trends-show-crowdfunding- to...](https://medium.com/startup-grind/trends-show-crowdfunding-to-surpass- vc-in-2016-65df924d8a82)

</comment><comment><USER21> I started a "creative venture studio" back in 2017 and we are mostly investing through a mix of sweat-equity and cash.

That's actually going surprisingly well. Slowly but surely and I now have a number of equity stakes in various startups some of them quite promising.

</comment><comment><USER22> I find that one potential source of confusion is in the definition of "seed round" . How many companies actually go from no capital raised to a $2M institutional round vs. how many raise a so-called "pre-seed" or "angel" round before the institutional round?

</comment><comment><USER23> I would imagine part of it is how much comp has risen for developers. If a couple founders are trying to raise 50-100k I would wonder why they couldn't get the cash themsevles by working for a big tech company and being frugal with their RSUs or by working the salt mines of contract development...

</comment><comment><USER24> Seems to me like institutional investors have increased prices for startups beyond what most angel investors could reasonably compete with. And I would argue this is due to the ongoing low interest rate environment where investors are desperate for yield and cash is plentiful.

</comment><comment><USER25> > Angel investors, on the other hand, seem either to be walking away, or > raising an institutional seed fund of their own.

I guess I'm unclear what does and doesn't count as an angel investment here. This would be more useful if it included a definition.

</comment><comment><USER26> I wonder if the cryptocurrency bubble also soaked up a lot of money that might otherwise have been playing in the angel investing market...

</comment><comment><USER27> This round of IPOs will for sure create a new class of Angels...already many early employees who have sold on secondary markets are as is.

</comment><comment><USER28> The weakening of patents plays a big part in this. Early stage funding in Silicon Valley once was aimed at a working model and a patent. Angels could afford that. If you have to compete by buying market share, it takes much more money upfront.

<comment><USER29> How have patents been weakened?

<comment><USER30> The Supreme Court Alice Corp v. CLS Bank International[0] decision made it harder to get a software or business method patent.

[0] [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_Intern...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alice_Corp._v._CLS_Bank_International)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> Not enough rapidly expanding bubbles

</comment><comment><USER32> Maybe part of them has invested in ICO and are now waiting for these startups to grow and return investments.

</comment><comment><USER33> The term "angel investor" is so cheesy. It implies altruistic motives, which are fairly rare in tech compared to say art.

Maybe the shift is due to the ever expanding definition of what a start-up is. Who knows, maybe the author, but he doesn't specify any sources.

<comment><USER34> To me, it implies a magic touch. I'd agree that this is in line with some of our cultural attitudes that glorify wealth.

</comment></comment><comment><USER35> Who says it's just angels? Maybe it's a symptom of the entire economy. If you told me that curve represented the silicon valley economy I'd be inclined to believe.</comment>


Chinese car maker unveils new model to take on Rolls-Royce - <AUTHOR> https://cntechpost.com/2020/01/09/chinese-car-maker-unveils-new-model-to-take-on-rolls-royce/ <comment><USER2> Sounds a bit rubbish and quite underpowered. Fairly sure RR aren't bothered.</comment>


80x40 - <AUTHOR> http://blog.mattbierner.com/80x40/ <comment><USER2> I think it'd be a lot more interesting if there was a limit to how many characters could change per pull request. It could still be botted, but there'd be more interesting art than at present where people are resetting it constantly instead of several people building something "interesting".

Fun concept regardless.

<comment><USER3> That sounds cool, but I wonder if there would be a problem if the repo hit anything close to a critical mass where several people were editing forked repos at once and submitting pull requests. I imagine it would be pretty frustrating to go through the process and make some changes only to find out that your original revision is now too outdated for the bot to merge.

</comment></comment><comment><USER4> As I expected, it didn't take long for picture to become a bunch of dicks.

[https://github.com/art-dot- git/80x40/commit/4f511b050a949bfc...](https://github.com/art-dot- git/80x40/commit/4f511b050a949bfc7a5be6daf29d3570affb5f8a)

<comment><USER5> I seriously don't get the humor in this.

<comment><USER6> Seconded. And some people are making themselves much less employable — that commit history is there to stay.

<comment><USER7> You made me want to draw some dicks in some public repo and get bad employers filter themselves out :P

<comment><USER8> Please do. If you consider a company expecting employees to have the maturity above an adolescent boy "bad employers", we'd like you to help filter yourself out.

<comment><USER7> Don't worry, you probably already filtered me out. I have plenty of ponies shown publicly in many places, including github profile. That degrades my maturity level to a little girl - and I'm not even a woman! [/s]

Any company judging "maturity" of actions done by someone in their spare time is not worth working for. It's just not their business to decide whether someone is "mature" or not, so if they cannot manage their business properly, why should I want to work with them? They probably won't be able to maintain healthy relationship with their employees anyway if they're so keen to filter out perfectly fine candidates over something so unimportant and nonharmful as low-grade sense of humor.

<comment><USER9> Liking something childish and acting unprofessionally are very different aspects of immaturity. I wouldn't care about the former, but the latter may reflect poorly on the company, especially in open source where developers are like ambassadors to the community.

But if you maintain a good wall between your professional life and that immature spare time, such that the employer doesn't even see the low-grade stuff, then fine.

<comment><USER7> How does employer seeing it or not make any difference? (except the obvious one that it's hard to react to what you can't see)

It's hardly even "acting unprofessionally". It's a lighthearted project where, well, some part of the fun is waiting for the first person to draw some dicks in. If you can't get over it, that's more likely problem with your attitude, not the person's who drew it.

<comment><USER9> If the employer is worried about how you represent their public image, and you've disassociated this activity well enough that the employer doesn't know about it, then their concern is mostly satisfied.

Anyway, let the mutual filtering continue. You don't want to work for a company that cares about drawing public dicks, and such a company won't want to hire you. It doesn't really even matter to decide whose attitude has a problem -- you're just culturally incompatible.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> He should set up a script to take a screenshot of it with each commit as well and make an animated gif.

<comment><USER11> You would get penises every two frames. Depending on the speed of the GIF, the result would be flickering penises...

<comment><USER12> Never have I seen an HN comment that would be this weird when taken out of context.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I was about to clone it and push a patch. But then, I realized how complex the procedure was going to be:

1- clone the repo on github 2- clone the clone locally 3- patch the file 4- commit (with a meaningful commit message) 5- push the patch to the clone on github 6- go to the github web to post a pull request.

Plus, that would leave a trace on my github account (I assume that I could:

7- delete my github clone.

but only after the pull request is acted upon (which even if automatic is bound to take some time during which this github activity could be seen).

The lesson here is that providing small patches is too costly.

<comment><USER14> The GitHub pull request model is absurdly complex for drive-by changes. I wish there were a way to just send a patch.

<comment><USER15> The edit button lets you change it easily

<comment><USER14> Obviously this doesn't apply here, but how does that work with changes across multiple files? Even one-off changes sometimes need to touch different parts of the codebase.

The ideal workflow for me would be:

1\. Clone the repo locally (not making a public fork that requires cleanup).

2\. Make changes and commit them (not making a branch that requires cleanup).

3\. Send the patch (or patches) for review.

4\. If the patch is reviewed, it's either automatically landed or a project committer applies it and commits it. Either way, there's nothing else I have to do at this point besides deleting my local clone.

I can see how the GitHub model works for people who contribute to the same projects frequently, but there's too much stuff you have to do (forking, cloning, branching) and then un-do if you're making a drive-by change and don't want the project to clutter up your profile.

<comment><USER16> Why are you fixating on this notion of cleanup? There's no need to "clean up" your public repos.

Even if you're making complex changes, I think GitHub is _much_ easier to work with than the classic "patch" emails.

I frequently will randomly fork a project that I'm using and submit a minor pull request when I wouldn't hunt down their source control system, clone it locally, make changes, find their preferred email/patch system, look up the commands to create a patch file, and email the patch.

GitHub is drop dead simple:

1\. Click fork. 2\. Edit your fork online or clone locally, committing changes. 3\. Click the "pull request" button.

Just because a model is new doesn't mean it's worse.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> This would be a far more interesting experiment if users could only modify a small subset of the characters per commit (a bit like GitHub Plays ASCII Art).

</comment><comment><USER18> The question whose answer I didn't see in the "Why" section is "Why 80x40?" 80x25, 80x50, and 80x43 seem obvious to me, but 80x40 feels odd... Maybe I'm just old and everyone uses 80x40 terminals now?

<comment><USER19> I'm not old, and I thought it would be a funny sized punch card. Also, his ASCII art doesn't have rounded corners like the standard IBM cards dating back to 1964.

<comment><USER20> I thought punchcards were 80x1. This is a stack of 40 cards.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> It would be a nice feature to reject any PRs that are over a certain # of characters diff. That way it becomes more collaborative instead of wholesale replacement.

<comment><USER22> Along the lines of TwitchInstallsArchLinux, GitHubDrawsAPicture

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> OF COURSE in its current state is a bunch of penises...

<comment><USER11> OF COURSE it's scripted so that it's almost always in that state.

</comment></comment><comment><USER24> Interesting. Put it sideways, allow to save many frames and then play ASCII movies. That may start a new fad. The internet is all about fads.

</comment><comment><USER25> An Interesting approach would be to use it as a GIF or video by using some distance formular to sort all the changes in the least changing way.

</comment><comment><USER26> sudo curl [https://github.com/art-dot- git/80x40/blob/master/README](https://github.com/art-dot- git/80x40/blob/master/README) > /etc/motd

<comment><USER27> You didn't actually try it, did you? :>

It should be:

sudo curl -L [https://github.com/art-dot- git/80x40/raw/master/README](https://github.com/art-dot- git/80x40/raw/master/README) -o /etc/motd

<comment><USER26> yeah I wouldn't run that, the content of that url looks nasty. any chance it could buffer override the motd command?

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> No Unicode, no graphical characters for ASCII art. Sad.

<comment><USER29> Maybe I'm just old, but I don't think of "ASCII art" and "graphical characters" as belonging together.

Traditionally, ASCII art is limited to ASCII 32-126 plus tabs.</comment></comment>


Things Microsoft Still Does Well - <AUTHOR> http://techland.time.com/2014/02/06/4-things-microsoft-still-does-well/ <comment><USER2> Microsoft's enterprise software is really, really good. Active Directory, SQL Server, Azure, C# and Visual Studio are all amazing. They also make tons of money, and MS is really good at managing them as cash cows over time.

Not coincidentally, they just put the Cloud and Enterprise guy in charge of the company.

<comment><USER3> I keep hearing this, but it's just such a foreign concept to me. The idea of - for lack of a better term - _surrendering_ my entire development stack to a single company rings just about every alarm bell in my head.

What happens when (say) .NET isn't the best tool for a particular job? Just close your eyes and use the inferior tool anyway? Or use the right tool and just throw the hard-won Microsoft ecosystem synergies out the window? I'm constantly using different technologies for different projects; doesn't this come up a lot in the enterprise world, too?

Granted, I'm not an enterprise developer. I've never worked on a code base that more than 20 people were working on at once. But I don't understand what makes large organizations see a walled-in ecosystem like that as a plus rather than a trap.

<comment><USER4> "Oops we developed our product on Silverlight because we're an MS-kit company and now Silverlight is crap. Now what?"

<comment><USER5> The fact that Microsoft stopped developing a technology that hardly anybody used isn't a surprise, I don't know of any business that would keep supporting something that was so obviously not going to succeed.

<comment><USER6> Silverlight is not a technology - at least not in the sense that it is a product and relies on two technologies - XAML and .NET.

As such it always amazes me to see otherwise intelligent people complain about Microsoft dumping or abandoning them and their Silverlight-based products.

The _technologies_ in Silverlight are in most cases directly portable to WPF, Windows Phone and WinRT. Any Dev that throws out effort based on Silverlight probably deserves being abandoned.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> daniel-levin The article misses a very important thing Microsoft still does very well: makes money [0]. Irrespective of one's opinion on the quality of their products, they still produce software the provides value for real people. They employ a ton of people, all across the world [1]. Microsoft may have lost a decade in the visible consumer segment (mobile phones, tablets), but they still make _boring, profitable, enterprise_ software that helps them on their way to $22B in annual profit. They're not shrinking either, according to their fast facts page [1]. Microsoft still does business _very, very well_. Even though I personally don't like most of their products, I'm genuinely excited by the change of CEO, because Microsoft has the resources (perhaps not the culture) to build awesome new technology in the next few years.

[0] [http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/msft](http://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/msft)

[1] [https://www.microsoft.com/en- us/news/inside_ms.aspx](https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/news/inside_ms.aspx)

</comment><comment><USER7> It's time to stop joking about IE like that. IE 11 is a fine Web browser these days. Yes, it took them a while to catch back up, but they have and they're a genuinely modern browser today. Firefox is still a better browser, for a good number of reasons, not the least of which is Mozilla's mission to put users and the health of the Internet first, but Microsoft engineers working on IE for the last few years deserve more credit than they're getting. Shouldn't we be cheering for them to build the best they can instead of insulting them?

<comment><USER8> > Shouldn't we be cheering for them to build the best they can instead of > insulting them?

No, we shouldn't. Do you have any reason to believe that if IE became dominant again, Microsoft would not abuse its position once more? I don't. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice ....

(And I wasn't fooled even once, but the Internet at large was).

The onus of proving that they mean well is on Microsoft this time, and they're not living up to it. Ok then, I guess IE11 is an ok HTML5 browser (don't have windows, can't even test). But they fought against introducing WebGL (and lost), and they're still reluctant to introduce WebRTC.

<comment><USER9> I think Asa is focusing more narrowly than you are. Both arguments are valid.

As a browser, MSIE 11 is vastly better than previous versions. They took what was just about the shittiest browser on earth, and made it more or less OK. (Although Firefox and Chrome are both better.) From that limited perspective, kudos to them.

As a corporation, though, Microsoft is still a toxic entity with poisonous effects on the ecosystems it participates in. It actively, brazenly works against the interests of the Internet user community as a whole, and those of its own customers. Microsoft the company is a bad actor on the scale of Oracle, Monsanto, Halliburton. So you're right, too.

<comment><USER10> And Google isn't?

Seriously. They drop products faster than Paris Hilton changes her hair color. They are involved in multi million settlements due to throwing their users privacy rights under a bus. Do you really want a browser from a company that is only interested in violating your privacy for a few extra dollars? Why put MS in the same league as Halliburton but give a free pass to Google?

But kudos to Firefox thou, I don't use it normally, but form what I read and little I used, they actually care about the user.

<comment><USER9> I didn't say anything about Google.

And, from what I can tell, Paris Hilton's hair color is pretty consistently blond: [https://www.google.com/search?q=paris+hilton+hair+color&clie...](https://www.google.com/search?q=paris+hilton+hair+color&client=safari&rls=en&source=lnms&tbm=isch&sa=X&ei=Dwb4Uq2eFZGakgX3-oD4CA&ved=0CAcQ_AUoAQ&biw=1383&bih=1116)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> Yes, the Xbox 360 has been a success in the US (beating the PS3), but in _every_ other market than the US, the PS3 has beaten the Xbox 360.[1] And the article in question is very US-centric on that regard. I am not saying the Xbox is necessarily bad, but is it better than the PlayStation? I think that's rather subjective.

Although I hear that neither Sony nor Microsoft has made a lot of money from their console adventures.

[1] [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_video_game_consoles_%28seventh_generation%29#Sales_standings)

<comment><USER12> My problem with Xbox 360 is it's selection of games. My wife bought the console for us two years ago and the only games we've played with it have been Skyrim and GTA V, which are also available for PS3. Almost all of the games available are in this so called 'dudebro' category: fps, sports etc.

What are missing are the japanese weird and arty, or colorful and playable games that are available for Playstation or Wii. The games I remember from my childhood (Mario, Zelda) or some absolutely mindblowing ideas like Journey.

<comment><USER13> agreed.

i went through the library again recently, and I could not find a single exclusive worth owning either of the xboxes (although galleon was nice, and jet grind radio eventually got re-released on PSN).

There is an exception to that of course, namely xbox live arcade. There are still a handful of XBLA exclusives that were worth it, but most of those have been re-released on PSN or steam too.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I guess this is consumer focused as it missed some of the real MS Gold - Azure, MSSQL, Visual Studio, C#.

However, on the consumer path this interested me:

>As the console gaming industry evolves (dies?), Nadella needs to convince America that the Xbox is truly a living room feature, not simply a gaming device. If he can sell that concept, Microsoft will leapfrog Sony and recapture the lead.

Despite the claims of the "living room console" being made for years, I really can't find any evidence for it. I can't see why a $499 console will beat out an $99 Apple TV for OTT entertainment in the larger consumer market. I still think this idea that the gaming console will become "the box" is an idea that has roots in the early 2000s, where people only have 1, maybe 2 televisions at home. If "John Jr." is playing video games for 4 hrs/day, I commonly see he does it in his room, not in the living room where he can impede on "John Sr."'s decision to watch the Netflix. Sure they could buy 2 Xbox Ones, but John Sr. doesn't really need all that gaming power.

<comment><USER15> Agreed--I think the living room 'hub' is DOA in a world of smartphones and tablets. Why would I want to mess around with some clunky 10 foot interface when I can just pull my phone out of my pocket or pick up the tablet on my coffee table?

<comment><USER16> You may be content with a 10 inch screen, but I live in a flat of 24-28year olds, and my xbox sees more use as a youtube player than it does as a gaming device. My flatmates are content to search for things using the awful controller text input to play them on the tv rather than use the laptops sitting right in front of them. I'd tell them about SmartGlass, but I doubt they'd use it.

<comment><USER17> Why would they use an xbox for YouTube rather than using a tablet in conjunction with an Apple TV or Chromecast? Is it just because the xbox is already there and always turned on?

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Microsoft might be /okay/ at doing a Mobile OS; they are, however, at the mercy of the platform drivers, and this recently drove me away from my perfectly-fine-except-for-one-killer-bug Nokia 920.

Something deep in the Nokia 920 was turning on and spinning the CPU like mad; the unit would heat up and drain the battery by mid day. Nothing I could do fixed it; I waited through two system updates and it was never fully addressed. (AT&T was never very quick about releasing updates, either; separate problem). I finally downgraded to an iPhone a few weeks ago. I can use the iPhone all day without worrying about the battery, but the mail client (which I use constantly) is a _lot_ more clumsy to use than the one on the Windows phone.

Microsoft is at the mercy of bad little code monkeys who write drivers at the BSP (Board Support Package) level, which are usually done at contract houses like BSquare. The code I've seen some out of these places has been . . . marginal. In the cases I've had to use it, I've usually wound up rewriting a lot of it. You get code that passes tests, but that's about the only bar for acceptance; internally the code is usually badly organized spaghetti whose mission is to pass the tests, and that's it.

You want the driver-level code in your system to be ROCK SOLID. If you contract this work out, you're going to need a great acceptance system [code and design reviews, because automated systems like WHQL are inadequate and get gamed anyway], a way to update drivers in the field so that mistakes can be corrected quickly [phone releases seem to happen every 9 months or so, so _nope_ ], and you want to be able to get good feedback from customers [looks at AT&T . . . sighs].

A phone is a top-to-bottom thing; blow one level and you've got a bad product. Microsoft hasn't really figured this out yet; maybe with the Nokia purchase they'll have a full stack and finally do everything right.

</comment><comment> chestnut-tree This article mixes two things - things that Microsoft does well from a UX perspective (like Windows phone 8) and things it does well in terms of sales and profitability, like Microsoft Office (which arguably is not very well designed in terms of UX).

This is true of other large software comapnies too: Adobe with their Creative Suite and Google with Android - both successful in terms of sales, but arguably very uneven in their usability (in my opinion).

</comment><comment><USER19> 5) Make money.

</comment><comment><USER20> It's a good article, but I'm not sure about one line used in describing Microsoft Office users:

"extremely loyal user base"

Is it really loyalty? Or is it inertia (people learned it once upon a time) combined with lock-in (everyone else is sharing documents in this proprietary format)?

</comment><comment><USER21> The very first things came into my mind when I saw the title were MS ergonomic mouse and keyboard, then xbox the second.

</comment><comment><USER22> Do we all agree that their only hope in consumer mobile is making Office cross-platform ?

</comment><comment><USER23> 0) Keyboards.

</comment><comment><USER24> *Thing

-> Enterprise</comment>