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Ask HN: What Happened to Pinboard (Dec '22 edition)?
131 points by danparsonson on Dec 20, 2022 | hide | past | favorite | 114 comments
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.




I’m working on an open-source social bookmarking site in Elixir that is API compatible with delicious/pinboard.

It’s named linkhut and it’s currently able to import your bookmarks from pinboard and browser exports. The flagship instance is: https://ln.ht

The source code is hosted here: https://sr.ht/~mlb/linkhut/

The documentation: https://docs.linkhut.org/introduction.html

The two things that are important to me in a bookmarking app (and why I‘ve been working on making one of my own on and off for a while): open source and offering an API for other tools to build upon.

The current API on linkhut aims to be bug for bug compatible with pinboard while being more OAuth-y.

I’m still working on an archiving feature similar to pinboard’s. But it’s probably going to take a while, I’ve been experimenting with different approaches and there’s still a few things I want to explore before settling on a solution. Once that’s ready I think I’ll call 1.0 complete.

In the meantime I’m still working through a laundry list of quality of life and small features (e.g.: recently I pushed support for “unread” links).


Glad to see an API-compatible alternative.

Is archiving on your roadmap? The primary reason I use Pinboard is (at least some of) my stored URLs have text snapshots I can use in the case of linkrot.


> API compatible with delicious/pinboard.

> […]

> The current API on linkhut aims to be bug for bug compatible with pinboard while being more OAuth-y.

This is neat!

Are there any API docs available for delicious, pinboard, and your application respectively?


Here they are:

Linkhut’s API: https://docs.linkhut.org/overview.html

Pinboard’s API: https://pinboard.in/api/

Delicious’ API: https://github.com/domainersuitedev/delicious-api


Thank you :)


It's hard for me to fathom why people continue to pay for a service, whose founder time and time again shown that providing a good service is least of his priority. It took me four emails and two DMs just for him to acknowledge that there was a problem back in 2019. I understand virtue of simplicity, but how much can it hurt to just make the site responsive or just fix the fucking bookmarklet so it doesn't take multiple clicks to add a single bookmark?

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.


I'm happy to keep paying for it, since it does exactly what I need, and I knew going in that I wasn't paying for a customer support team to genuflect every time I had a question or concern. If it's not working at all for you, don't pay for it. What's baffling to me is how this manages to generate a whole thread of drama twice a year. It's a bookmarking service.


It’s not just a bookmarking service. It’s also an archiving service. People are annoyed that the archiving part doesn’t work reliably.


"It's an archiving service" doesn't make this drama any more interesting, and, again, it's weird that it keeps happening here. Just stop paying for it if it isn't working for you, and stop trying to use HN to take people own a peg.


I paid 5 years in advance after I had zero problems with pinboard for a couple of years. When archiving started to detoriate I contacted support and got ignored. Now I try to take my archive with me and again: it does not work and I get no reply. Maciej has for years marketed pinboard as the sane, stable alternative to VC-money chasing competitors and now for quite some time the service now does not deliver to promise. What you call "drama" most likely are frustrated users who believed in his story.


I understand the complaint, because I have read it on HN a lot. I don't understand why people think it's such an interesting story.

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.


> is exporting your entire archive even a feature Pinboard says it has?

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).


Apparently a bunch of people used pinboard to bookmark the reorder form for their lifesaving medication, and now the site is down, and they're going to die. Or something equally dreadful, based on the reports of all the serious harm he's causing.


I've always had good service in the past and the archiving feature has been genuinely useful over the years; I'm not sure what's happened in recent times.

Luckily it's a good time to self-host.


I don't think most people factor the founder into their buying decisions at all


Maybe not, but it's definitely relevant if the founder is the only employee.


Because there's no alternative service to choose from.


How do you figure?

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.


I opened up raindrop.io and I see a video, and what appears to be a bootstrap.js site. I cannot express how much these things sway me away from the service. I will never use a site like this, if I can help it. Also, apparently there's an app. Facepalm.

The best part of pinboard is that there is none of this... stuff.


That "app" thing kept me from trying Raindrop for a long time, too. You can ignore it, it's just poor copy as far as I can tell.

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.


Highlighting is the killer feature in Raindrop for me -- it's such a quick way to help me remember why I bookmarked something.


Anybox [1] is a great replacement if you are in the Apple ecosystem.

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/


Thanks for this. If importing works I’ll try out AnyBox.


Raindrop is fantastic. Not only as a browser extension, but the apps are useful themselves as a way to browse your bookmarks efficiently.


Signed up for raindrop now.

Wondering what happens if the solo dev gets ill, but as long as I backup it has to be better than pinboard has become.


How is that different from pinboard's dev getting ill? Both are single-dev projects


Pinboards dev already has some kind of problem, whatever it is.

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.


I'm miserable about Pinboard. I loved it, I even paid extra to get a silly emoji thinking I could throw some extra money to the developer.

Except 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.


That extra money really helped with development, didn’t it?

At this point that email is starting to seem dishonest.


Truly I don't want to give him MORE money just to get my data out of there. It feels like a slap in the face after a slap in the face.

Definitely taught me some lessons about the naive thinking of leaning in on indie projects.


If you are in Europe just submit to him a GDPR request (for fun).


We worry about the “bus problem” when it comes to one dev operations but should we also worry about the “dev getting bored” problem?

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.


It’s still the “bus problem”:

Either they got hit by the bus, or they hopped on the bus and rode away.


>> should we also worry about the “dev getting bored” problem?

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.


He's just an a-hole. He managed to convince people otherwise by having an interesting blog.


POLL: Should I step down as head of Pinboard? I will abide by the results of this poll.


I think you're getting downvoted by people not realizing that you're actually the head of pinboard.

Either way, a flippant post is kind of insulting to your customers.


No, it’s a funny joke.


It's funny and annoying, which is Maciej's schtick. The cooly ironic lets-not-take-it-too-seriously approach to customer service.


Getting bored with your creation is completely understandable, but why not sell it? Or give it away? Or even gracefully shut it down, so that people know where to stand?

I must say, your current attitude is a little bit sad and disappointing.


Stop accepting new customers if you don't care about the product anymore.


Your attitude is honestly baffling. I hope you manage to resolve whatever has gone wrong for you.


Sell it man. You clearly seemed to have lost focus for your own reasons and I don't even want to judge you but don't leave paying customers without answers. You will find a buyer easily if you say Yes.


Your behavior is disrespectful towards your users (who pay you). You should be ashamed.


it's very funny to me that the post below this at the time mentions that you'll be off twitter for the year


I will buy it for $100k. Serious offer btw


Expect $1000-1500k.

$100k is about 5 months revenue: https://blog.pinboard.in/2019/07/i_cant_stop_winning/


That is 3 years old though.


Yes. It's clearly time to promote yourself to butt of Pinboard.


Whatever the result is, answer my emails first.

FWIW I vote no :-|


So upvotes = you resign? I'm a little unclear about this...


https://twitter.com/elonmusk/status/1604617643973124097


Sell it to Elon! Seems he's trying to shift focus.


This isn't even slightly funny. I know several people who your neglectful ownership has caused a lot of trouble, on top of you ghosting them, and I've had to take to actively warning people away from Pinboard - even as you raise your prices with the promise of fixing Pinboard's rot. [NARRATOR: "He did not keep his promise."] If you are burntout and emotionally aversive to doing anything about it, well, it happens to the best of us, but at least have the personal maturity to acknowledge that you have moved on, and put someone else who gives a damn in charge (or sell it). You're doing the same dog-in-the-manger thing to Pinboard you criticized others like Delicious for doing.


As predicted, he responded with his usual snark implying what recourse do you (the customer) have? And last time I mentioned the website being in shambles, he contested that claim. He is not traveling in a place without internet: he reads every comment that is posted about him or pinboard here.


> what recourse do you (the customer) have?

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?


This is the solution. Too many chargebacks and his business will be classified as high-risk by credit card processing companies, and his ability to do business could be jeopardized.[1]

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...


Although you have to admit that we are in a timeline where "funny" has taken on a dramatically different meaning. And since some of the largest corps out there (Google) are not doing any better, I'd feel bad blaming the one single guy who's honestly trying.


He's not honestly trying. He used to. For years. That was when he was honestly trying (and succeeding).

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?


Never trust an easter-european, man. If they haven't scolded you, yet, then you see the rhyming-with-new'ish monetary tactics they use. Lost all hope in this [pinboard/pin-bor'ed; but please-give-me-moneys]individual permanently. Never again! It's always the same!


Slurs aren't allowed. We've banned this account.


> I'd feel bad blaming the one single guy who's honestly trying.

The point here is that he's not honestly trying; he's neither of those words.


In this year, my base assumption is that everyone's trying, even if it's just trying not to psychologically decompose.


Do or do not.

It’s up to you.

¯\＿(ツ)＿/¯


Pinboard is arguably the type of service that can withstand the tide of times much better than overblown posh "modern" web apps. But it's a sad truth that even the best things eventually erode and die. I really hope Maciej is doing well and doing other important things, and I hope that others pick up the crucial task of safeguarding the web in a sane way.

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


I don't use pinboard but I have seen enough posts on HN now complaining about lack of response from Pinboard to paying users. I know it is run by 1 person and he clearly doesn't care. Try and move on if you can.


This is the perfect review. "I never read your book, but people on here say you don't enjoy writing."


You have a lot of actual users sharing their frustrations on this thread. Yet you choose not to reply to them, and instead to someone that has not “read your book” (which point you are trying to make, I’m not sure).


I would encourage people who are a little technical to try creating their own solution to the problem that Pinboard.in tries to address. I did this with a similar ethos (simple design, plain html, no external js libs) and I've been running it for the last 2 years very happily.

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


This post pretty much encapsulates the problem with consumer Saas as a business model.

If you’re charging $1-2/month, you need thousands of paying customers to make it a worthwhile endeavor (vs just working for someone else).

With thousands of paid users, support requests are going to come in pretty much daily—-and you’ll be amazed how many people think you should be on-call 24/7 to provide support for them even if they’re only paying you $2!

Then the bad reviews start piling up, the codebase gets stale, competitors starting biting at your heels, your motivation wanes, etc.

The market developed the way it did for a reason. Google of the early 2000s wasn’t stupid. Consumers value their time at zero and don’t want to pay for anything, so they get invasive ads, trackers, and robot support.

Businesses value their time appropriately, so that’s why there’s still a robust paid B2B Saas market.


Self-hosted Wallabag[0] FTW

The cloud is just someone else's computer.

[0] https://github.com/wallabag/wallabag


That sounds quite tragic. Must be annoying. Not sure if it's the same use case, but if you're interested in archiving links from bookmarks, my DiskerNet product does that: https://github.com/crisdosyago/DiskerNet

also there's plenty of other archiving solutions you can find online, like SingleFile, ArchiveBox, Memento, ... etc


Thank you - I am indeed planning to self-host an ArchiveBox instance although I'll take a look at the others you linked too. As they say, nobody looks after your own stuff like you do :-)


I use https://ln.ht/ that someone wrote in elixir


Oh, nice! I didn’t know about that one.


Maybe it’s impossible to say "I don’t care about this anymore and you should find something else" for a few different reasons: the recurring subs would dry up; he doesn’t want to admit it. OR: he’s been working on pinboard v2 for a couple years and wants to drive people WILD with a sudden drop.

I was an early adopter, though, and I bought in because I perceived the whole point to be "you can have a sustainable, better product than something that gets gobbled up by a megacorp."


I've been a user since 2011. I love the simplicity of the site. A few years ago all the old-timers that paid once in the past have been asked to switch to a subscription plan.

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?


I've got a container running linkding ever since that email trying to convert us old timers to a subscription basis. I figured first would be the polite ask, then later the strong arm. Only think missing for me for linkding is an android app.


linkding in a container has been working great for me


Weird, not long ago there was nothing but praise for this service and the author, now both the service and HN's opinion seem to have backslid.


> both the service and HN's opinion seem to have backslid.

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.


The timing is poor as well, he made the plea for the one time purchase users to convert to subscriptions then seriously defocused on the service, leaving the people who did convert feeling sour about it.


> I notice that idlewords is recently active on HN

https://news.ycombinator.com/threads?id=idlewords

We need a way to page HN users...


He will probably respond with a snarky reply soon. That’s what he always does.


https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34066722

there was this reply - POLL: Should I step down as head of Pinboard? I will abide by the results of this poll.


I still use it, but I stopped paying after archiving stopped working and none of my emails were answered anymore.

At that point it fell back to my original perpetual license it seems.

Edit: for those who wonder what it was all about it was a replacement for the social bookmarking service del.icio.us.

Part of the appeal for people like me who were also enthusiastic early WhatsApp adapters was the idea "I/we charge you money and provide a service, thats it, no ads/tracking funny business."


Can you please share your script for manually downloading all the backups? I also can't manage to get a backup done.


I use, like and pay for Pinboard. I don't use the archiving feature though - it's just a dump for links, and it does that very well.

I do worry that it's going to go kaput from neglect at some point, so it would be nice to see a bit of development and get these issues fixed. But either way the level of outrage here is a bit OTT. It's not life or death, it's just bookmarks.


I'd love an alternative but none of the suggestions integrate directly with IFTTT[1] which I use extensively to stuff things into pinboard. Tens of thousands of things over the years.

(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.


It looks like Raindrop is supported by IFTTT: https://ifttt.com/raindrop


His Twitter account said he's taking a year off from Twitter. Maybe he's taking a year off from other things too.

"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


Had no idea what pinboard was before this thread. The website looks not so great, but reading the service is quite amazing how it nailed such a simple idea so well. Totally understand being a useful service.

Too bad there’s so many issues reported here. Is there any self hostable open source alternative?


> The website looks not so great

For many (most?) users, that was a feature: no fluff.


From the outside looking in it seems like being terminally online has damaged him in some way. Very sad, hope he gets some help to get over what’s causing him this derangement.


This is my first time hearing about this website. Surprising to see the founder is American but the top level domain for pinboard is Indian, any particular reason he chose .in ?


Stands for Pinboardin’ if I recall correctly.


I would guess he liked the overall sound/look/feel of the domain name.


Working on an alternative take — follow https://twitter.com/flipso for updates.


What's your timeline? The dates on twitter suggest that it is abandoned.


No, just recycling the name from a previous project. Early 2023.


Out of curiosity, why has a replacement for this service not been created? I don't use the product myself but love the developers blog.


raindrop.io

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.


Just signed up to Raindrop free account, very impressed. This is a strong web app, I'm instantly a fan. Free plan is solid.

Used Pinboard years ago then stopped. Raindrop is leaps ahead in design and function.


I can't get his blog to load, seems to be a certificate expiry. https://blog.pinboard.in/


> Types "Why is internet waiter rude to me? (Dec '22 edition)"

> Gets mad when internet waiter is rude in comments


This guy's shtick has always been "I am a shithead", it's funny to see people disappointed that they found out he's a shithead.


It isn't a shtick if you're an actual shithead.


If you want to be holy to HN, you have to develop a product with zero modernity, zero responsiveness. It's really interesting to pay for a site that only one man developed for his own pleasure.


I've been a user for ten years plus and reading this thread is the first indication I have had that I'm meant to be dissatisfied. Admittedly I have never used the archive feature but every other aspect of the service has been fine and has done exactly what I expected. I migrated from del.icio.us and having lived through the two or three relaunches of that, including the inevitable 'socialisation', the stability was, and has been, welcome.

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've been a customer since 2010 and for the majority of that time it's been great.


Why would you capitalize most words in the title? It's harder to read, especially with invented names which should always be capitalized.


Title case[0] is often automatically applied by HN, with some extra rules for a lot of edge cases.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_case


I believe it never happened to me that HN automatically capitalized words in titles I submitted.

Standing by my opinion that such titles are harder to read, I often remove unnecessary capitalization when submitting.


I lazily copy-pasted from the previous such post - hope I didn't spoil your day.




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