Ask HN: What Happened to Pinboard (Dec '22 edition)?
Well here we are again... it appears that the archiving function (to which I subscribe) is degraded - URLs crawled since about May 22 that landed on cache5.pinboard.in just return 404 (or in one case, garbage) when accessed; perhaps the drive is full? Anyone else noticed the same? Older links still seem to work OK.
I notice that idlewords is recently active on HN despite being impossible (for me at least) to get hold of by email - if you're reading this, would you resolve the above issue at least? Then I can finish manually scraping the archive I have built up, since I've been unable to persuade you to prepare a backup of it for me and I'm now concerned the site will go offline without warning.
122 comments
[ 1.9 ms ] story [ 197 ms ] threadExcept when I stopped my subscription I got locked out my grandfathered account and couldn't use it as I could before. Basically punishing me for donating.
Oh well.
At this point that email is starting to seem dishonest.
Definitely taught me some lessons about the naive thinking of leaning in on indie projects.
As for the rest of us, I stick to Cavafy:
> As someone long prepared for this to happen
> Go firmly to the window. Drink it in
> Exquisite music. Alexandra laughing
> Your first commitments tangible again
> And you who had the honor of her evening
> And by that honor had your own restored –
> Say goodbye to Alexandra leaving;
> Alexandra leaving with her lord
also there's plenty of other archiving solutions you can find online, like SingleFile, ArchiveBox, Memento, ... etc
Archiving and full-text search are useful features, but they are so unreliable that it doesn't make sense to continue paying. Trust me, copy/pasting links in your notes app is a much saner alternative.
Luckily it's a good time to self-host.
Raindrop.io is aggressively priced for all that it provides (I have switched from pinboard to this, and it is a near 1:1 replacement). In fact, it provides features such as highlighting / annotation that Pinboard.in will never implement.
Wallabag, Linkding, and Archivebox are three selfhosted options that come to mind, that serve similar purposes.
The best part of pinboard is that there is none of this... stuff.
Once I finally got around to trying it, I found it to be a performant webapp. More performant than most.
The home page really doesn't present it in a good light, but the actual service is good, you should give it a shot.
Also: is exporting your entire archive (not the bookmarks, but the archived copies) even a feature Pinboard says it has? That's news to me.
Yes, it's in Settings>Backup>Archive Backup
I think to remember that idlewords even recommended to do it once in a while. Should I not get my archive backup I guess I can still reconstruct most of it from the Internet Archive. It would just be nice if it worked (but my 5-year subscription will run out soon now anyway).
Btw anyone who is concerned about the stability of the system should use the export function, I do this every couple of months to allow for Maciej going under a bus.
I’m not sure what’s happened to Pinboard I hope Maciej is alright.
I tweeted him ages ago asking about if the pin a URL page could become responsive so I don’t have to use a separate mobile app. He’s responded with a joke. Years later and I’m still using the mobile app.
This is one thing I worry about. I would love to start a one dev, money making, app...but I know me, I'll get bored. I would have to find something that I am really passionate about where any $$ is just a consequence of what I made and enjoy working on.
Also, I'm not sure I want to deal with customers.
Either they got hit by the bus, or they hopped on the bus and rode away.
It had a few hiccups 2 years back, but it's been going great. Been using it fir 2 years and it's really good. My choices were raindrop or pinboard and went with raindrop due to native apps ans open source client.
Used Pinboard years ago then stopped. Raindrop is leaps ahead in design and function.
https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=idlewords
We need a way to page HN users...
there was this reply - POLL: Should I step down as head of Pinboard? I will abide by the results of this poll.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_case
Standing by my opinion that such titles are harder to read, I often remove unnecessary capitalization when submitting.
I would have happily done it if it wasn't for the abysmal support. Twice I emailed about an issue and haven't even gotten as much as a confirmation that my mail was received.
With a product as simple as this, I can get behind saying no to feature requests, but there are actual bugs that are ignored.
Is there maybe some sort of self-hostable php solution like this?
The latter is a consequence of the former. The complaint is specifically that the service has been breaking down and there has been little communication about it.
Raindrop [2] is another alternative that a lot of people seem to enjoy.
I tried many alternatives to Pinboard and like AnyBox best so far.
[1] https://anybox.app/ [2] https://raindrop.io/
Wondering what happens if the solo dev gets ill, but as long as I backup it has to be better than pinboard has become.
Raindrops dev doesn't, as far as I can see.
Also raindrop look nicer and hasn't scammed anyone that I am aware of.
Basically one is approximately 100% chance of not getting what I am paying for and the other one is an unknown percentage.
The cloud is just someone else's computer.
[0] https://github.com/wallabag/wallabag
"Alright, I'm going to take a year off the twitters and see what else I can do with the time...See you all in 2023!"
https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1476079701978345472
(I also requested my archive a couple of weeks back with no result. It's disheartening.)
[1] It's possible that some of them could be integrated via the Webhook functionality but eh.
Either way, a flippant post is kind of insulting to your customers.
$100k is about 5 months revenue: https://blog.pinboard.in/2019/07/i_cant_stop_winning/
I must say, your current attitude is a little bit sad and disappointing.
Credit card chargeback. If you were prudent enough to pay by credit card. That did the trick for me.
After I proved to my bank's satisfaction the fraudulent behavior (what was promised on his web site: screen shot, refund offer on his web site: screen shot, several emails without reply: attachment, HN and Reddit threads: screenshot) and after my bank sent me a message that the chargeback was approved, I suddenly got a refund message from Pinboard shortly thereafter. I guess merchants get a last chance warning by VISA or so?
If other, lesser measures have failed to make him treat his customers with respect, affecting his livelihood might do the trick.
1. https://www.firstcardpayments.com/what-happens-to-your-busin...
The point here is that he's not honestly trying; he's neither of those words.
Today he's taking on new customers and their money, despite knowing full well that archiving (the premier feature) and sometimes also export has not worked for many users for several years now, with zero communication.
He then pops up in all those HN threads, doesn't say anything about the problems at all, but makes jokes and dismissive comments. That's the only life sign his customers get.
And every time in these threads there are bystanders like you who try to give the benefit of the doubt (and thereby minimize the problems caused for many users). Honorable in principle.
Honestly, I understand that you don't want to pile on when you don't have first hand info, but maybe try not to pick sides then?
FWIW I vote no :-|
It’s up to you.
¯\＿(ツ)＿/¯
In fact, I've said on HN a few times this year how I could never go back to anything else after the lived experience of using such a key tool that is built to do exactly what I want.[1]
[1] Some previous discussions on HN:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33627603
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33978500
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33556765