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Ask HN: What Happened to Pinboard (April '22 edition)?

78 points by ihodes ↗ HN
There have been threads like this before (last one in 1.5 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30628375), but I'm not really sure what to do. I've emailed Maciej on 4/13/21, 12/11/21, and 4 times in the past month (a more urgent issue) with no response.

Full-text search is regularly broken, archiving doesn't work sometimes, and most recently my >5yr archiving account was disabled on 4/1 with no warning or ability to re-up, so as far as I know I've lost archived bookmarks from up to a decade ago (don't remember when I turned on the service). It doesn't look like

When I tried to re-up my archiving account, I selected 10 years, but was charged for 1 year (without the 10 yr discount, of course) instead.

I really have enjoyed using Pinboard, and have been since at least 2011 (when the entry was created in 1pw), but this is a bummer and I'm not sure what to do. I really respect Maciej and wish him the best, and would love to keep using Pinboard.

Edit: Maciej, I hear you're in Taiwan. I'd love to give you some recommendations off the beaten path!

47 comments

[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 110 ms ] thread
carom
I saw his tweets fall off. I hope he is alright.
Cenk
He’s in the middle of a year-long Twitter break:

> Alright, I'm going to take a year off the twitters and see what else I can do with the time. Follow @idlewords for blog post notifications, http://blog.pinboard.in for actual Pinboard stuff. Great Slate 2022: under no circumstances give any politicians money. See you all in 2023!

https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1476079701978345472

throwanem
That the blog link serves an Apache default page right now seems concerning. I hope he's really okay, and just too busy and interested with a good life to be worrying about the little stuff.
hpkuarg
It works fine on https://, so it looks like he just didn't configure Apache correctly. Strange either way.
tqkxzugoaupvwqr
Doesn’t inspire confidence in the quality of the service.
gerikson
Boy will he be surprised when he returns to Twitter to find a smouldering crater presided over by a gold-plated statue of Elon Musk.
dezzadk
Yeah he seems very depressive, going through some personal stuff.

I think his (pinboard) Twitter-bio said something dark like "The light inside is broken, but I still work" at some point.

derekjobst
Is it possible to export all my data from pinboard? I'm realizing it would be nice to back that all up every once in a while
pronoiac
I was able to export my bookmarks, but not my archived tweets; I got a 500 for the latter.
jacknews
Can you export tab sets?

I find having bookmarks in context with related things open at the time to be quite valuable.

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dismantlethesun
I bought a yearly package after listening to rave reviews and almost immediately felt remorseful. It’s feels like an abandoned product.
ihodes
I absolutely love Pinboard, seems like hiring one person to attend the support queue would solve >80% of the problem.
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kashunstva
> I absolutely love Pinboard

I loved Pinboard, too. (past tense) I was an early adopter and paid for lifetime access - an option that was available at the time. Now, the API is often down so my native clients I use on macOS and iOS are useless.

Sadly, I've moved on. Espial seems to fit what I need.

LeoPanthera
I have a legacy lifetime account so I won't experience any billing glitches, but I've had no problems with any other features. I use it most days and haven't experienced any problems.

Frankly, the stability of the service is what I like about it.

ihodes
Same, I have a free account from having signed up when it was something like $8 for life, the core features actually seem to work pretty well (though I have had some documented search issues where tags weren't being searched; I think that was resolved and one-off).

I pay for the archiving service partially to support Pinboard because I want it to stay solvent, partially because it soothes me to know I can refer back to websites (at least the page I archives) that I found valuable in the past.

kome
best $6,28 i ever spent.
zorbash
Shameless plug: I run https://tefter.io a pinboard alternative which supports importing your bookmarks from pinboard and even has team collaboration features.
kappuchino
No shame in that, since your service is even cheaper. Oh. Nevermind. /s

(In perspectice for 39$/month I can self host 1+ premium vps server(s) and run one or more of those https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted#boo...)

zorbash
Hey, for a fair comparison with pinboard you should check out our personal pricing plans, https://www.tefter.io/personal which start from $9/year. The 39$/month you mentioned is for team workspaces of unlimited members.
plainolrandy
My archiving account was also disabled on April 1 and all my history deleted, despite the fact that it was paid through sometime in 2023. I also got no renewal notification like I had every previous time the service expired.

I didn't bother contacting support because I've been ignored for the past 2 months in my repeated inquiries about archiving being broken, so I just accepted my money being stolen.

obscura
I'm afraid this is nothing new. I experienced similar frustrations - archiving didn't work, there were no notices about downtime, and support response was abysmal despite a Twitter account that was very active about US politics - all back in 2017. I left disappointed and with a refund in 2018.
benrapscallion
I have said this before in the context of similar discussions: the Pinboard website is in shambles, the owner doesn’t give a rat’s posterior beyond just collecting his money, and while from his blog, he may seem like some sort of a god entrepreneur, he doesn’t even do the bare minimum for his paying customers.
idlewords
Would it be possible to consolidate all the "what happened to Pinboard" threads in one place? It would greatly reduce my workload!
MollyRealized
Or, y'know, you could just either (a) stop screwing the people who gave you money, or (b) return the money and shut down the service you're ignoring.
benrapscallion
This guy has a habit of making fun of those who criticize him after paying him.
tsg
I started the previous thread and nothing has changed for me - I just looked and my wife's account is still completely broken (full text search just returns errors), and 90% of the bookmarks on my account for the previous month have failed to archive at all.
MollyRealized
I'd love to know why Maciej feels he can convince people to give him money, not provide the services he promises, and then be very flippant about it in this very thread (he's idlewords, and perhaps boneidlewords).
gaws
Pinboard has really gone to shit. I terminated my account a few months ago and switched to espial. No regrets.
HAL9OOO
Found this thread not being able to save any bookmarks through the 'Pinput' chrome extension or directly through the site with no errors/warnings at all...

Just exported all the data and for me, time to look for alternatives. I really don't like the flippant nature of the dev.