16 ms·
I Can’t Stop Winning
- jackfoxy 7y agoI have been a Pinboard user since 2010. In fact, I got in at some point where the service offered free service forever. Thank you. I'm also a contributor to the drop in active users. I stopped using it for several years. Don't know why. Started using on a daily basis in the last year. Feel like I still don't use it nearly to my full benefit. Simple. Does basically one thing. For a service to be pretty close to perfect, it has to be simple.
- bigiain 7y agoThe gentleman has all the "cool" cred covered: https://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm https://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm (I've been following his blog for ~12 years now, ever since I first read this one: https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_tunnel.htm https://idlewords.com/2007/04/the_alameda_weehawken_burrito_... )
- codeisawesome 7y agoJust clarifying, by 'follow' do you mean a manual poll by refreshing the home page? I don't even see an RSS feed... and he has no personal Twitter account, I don't know if @Pinboard is the a/c to follow (I don't want the site news, I just think his personal views are cool and his writing is extremely funny).
- keyle 7y agoThere are many wise quotes in that post, but this is my favourite. > My grandpa sometimes said "you have to help your fate along".
- NelsonMinar 7y agoI continue to love Pinboard. I run a linkblog through it; it's not so much bookmarks for me as a small link-focussed blog. The HTML view (Pinboard's own) is ugly, but it works great in an RSS reader or as a Twitter / Mastodon account fed from the RSS. It's so nice to have a simple, reliable service. I got a little cranky when the various Pinboard APIs started suffering some scaling problems, I think during the hiatus Maciej mentions as he was busy trying to save America. That's OK, we survived, although jury is still out on whether America will.
- etherdoc 7y agoI would be interested to learn more about how you run a linkblog using Pinboard.
- smacktoward 7y ago> A one-person business is an exercise in long-term anxiety management, so I would say if you are already an anxious person, go ahead and start a business. You're not going to feel any worse. +1
- keyle 7y agoAnd become a solo indie game developer! Wooo the roller coaster.
- Cthulhu_ 7y agoPart of me would like to do that. But part of me is also very consciously aware I'm terrible at self-managing / motivating, and that the indie game development market is flooded by people and games that are a lot more creative than the ones I could come up with who still aren't able to make ends meet years down the line. But maybe I'm just cynical and afraid to get out of my comfort zone.
- trevyn 7y agoIf you were doing it just for fun, with no expectation of a financial or reputational payoff, would you still like to do it? Would it feel different?
- Schwolop 7y agoYes, but I (we? I get the feeling I’m not alone in this...) never finish them. It’s always more fun to start the next one than finish the first.
- function_seven 7y agoI loved the line soon after that one: > Running an online service solo puts one in the coffin corner between the Dunning Kruger effect and impostor syndrome. This guy knows how to write.
- 7y ago
- simonebrunozzi 7y ago> What does the future hold for Pinboard? Death! The bus that one day comes for us all! The skeletal, icy hand on an unprepared shoulder! Pain, a flash of light, then numbing darkness. So back up your bookmarks. I love this sentence, and the spirit of it.
- mstade 7y agoThe whole post is a wonderful piece of self deprecation. I love it.
- dankohn1 7y agoIf you like it, I highly recommend spending $0.99 on the app WeCroak. A review: https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/when-death-pings/546587/ https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/when-de...
- Arete314159 7y agoYes, it's that slavic pessimism combined with Gen-X fatalism that really gets me.
- b123400 7y agoMe too! Especially when we know most services will eventually die, no matter it's Google+ or any trendy startup that will be acquired at some point.
- eridius 7y agoI didn't realize Pinboard is only 10 years old. It feels like it's been around forever.
- idlewords 7y agoWell, at its inception it was a retro reboot of 2003-era delicious, so at no point did it feel new and fresh to anyone.
- deejaybog 7y agoWhat with the Botoșani reference, what were you doing in Romania?
- idlewords 7y agoMy girlfriend was in the Peace Corps and I was freeloading.
- deejaybog 7y agoAh, thought for a moment you have relatives there or something. Was born nearby (Iași) and have good friends/college mates from Botoșani. Ever thought about leveraging your skills/instincts/fame for much bigger impact other than through politics ;) ;) ? I'm in Seattle tired of big corp, cooking up with other ex-pat Romanians a service to disrupt the traditional ad model while preserving privacy and data ownership. Email is in my profile if at all interested.
- daturkel 7y agoAs far as I'm concerned, Pinboard is the most reasonably managed digital product I pay for. No feature creep, no bloat, no overthinking it. While Maciej notes accurately that death comes for us all, he's already outlasted the theoretically more powerful competitor that was Delicious. I would say "I'm excited to see what's next for Pinboard," but I suspect the future is all it needs to be: The service will continue to function as designed, and that's all I really need.
- garysahota93 7y agoAgreed!! It's a no-nonsense service that just works. I use it everyday but don't have to think about it or relearn it as the years go by. I love it for what it is and am excited for the next 10 years.
- azinman2 7y agoI thought this is saying it won’t continue.. the whole death + backup part?
- binarymax 7y agoHe’s speaking more of the human condition aspect of things. On a long enough timeline the survival rate for everyone drops to zero. Be prepared.
- sprafa 7y agoI love Pinboard the way I love no other digital product I’ve ever owned or interacted with. If anyone wants to take lessons for the future of what digital products could and should be, they should learn their lessons from Pinboard. It’s a delightful and wonderful service.
- idlewords 7y agoThis is extremely nice to read; thank you!
- 7y ago
- personjerry 7y ago> What does the future hold for Pinboard? Death! The bus that one day comes for us all! The skeletal, icy hand on an unprepared shoulder! Pain, a flash of light, then numbing darkness. So back up your bookmarks. Is he shutting saying he's shutting it down, or just saying that's the future eventually?
- bigiain 7y agoI'm 100% confident Maciej's "Our incredible journey!" blog post will one day be the most hilarious and popular entry here: https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com https://ourincrediblejourney.tumblr.com Fortunately, today is not that day. I hope it's a long time in the future...
- workergnome 7y agoIf there was anything keeping on the internet, it is the fact that I may some day get to read that post. Hopefully some day deep into my retirement.
- LeoPanthera 7y agoYes. Eventually.
- SonicSoul 7y agoHe just described every digital service. There is no such thing as buying audible books or kindle books or iTunes movies. We’re just leasing it until their runway ends or they change their TOS
- LeonB 7y agoJust the latter.
- pvg 7y agoThat's nobody's business but the Turks.
- austhrow743 7y agoIts a service ran by a single person. He croaks and its gone with no warning. You should anticipate that as how your relationship with any non-big name service you use will end because that's how it will. It just won't be working one day, then the next. You'll hit the internet to find that the person running it died a month ago and the business with them.
- LeoPanthera 7y agoI have a lifetime account that I don’t have any ongoing payments for. And now I feel a bit guilty.
- wyclif 7y agoI do too, but as an early adopter (long before the Delicious "sunset" fiasco), I did quite a bit of evangelizing for Pinboard. I'd like to think that some people signed up for paid accounts because of me, but I have no way of knowing.
- eridius 7y agoI do too. I actually didn't even realize new accounts are on a yearly subscription model.
- patryn20 7y agoMan it’s so great to see sites like this continue to thrive. At the same time, I am once again amazed at how little revenue a publicly touted successful project makes.
- quickthrower2 7y ago$200k/y. One developer? Digital nomad friendly? Freedom from the pointy haireds? No real need to do 40h/ week? I think that is damn fantastic revenue.
- truebosko 7y agoThat's revenue, so not .. quite what he's taking home. Less cost of servers, then benefits which he's not getting from an employer, 401k matching, etc. It adds up but yes .. the freedom is nice :)
- patryn20 7y agoOh I’m not disputing it’s good for a single developer along with the freedom. It’s just that these projects always get talked up as huge successful life changing products (like Bingo Card Creator and appointment reminders etc) and then have really small revenue numbers attached to them. Don’t get me wrong, kudos to the developers for building something people love and that give them the lifestyle they want. I just think these projects are often overhyped to seem more than what they actually are: lifestyle projects.
- idlewords 7y agoI mean, they are life-changing projects. This is not my lifestyle, but my life. What more do you want?
- jholman 7y agoFrankly, if you don't have a bespoke Pagani Zonda with your initials in the model name, we're collectively unsure that your lifestyle has enough style or enough life. Thinking it over, I might not even invite you to my birthday party.
- jccalhoun 7y agoI am glad to see him write that he is trying to win back customers. I use pinboard a lot and was worried it was going down when a post appeared here saying that parts of pinboard weren't working and the owner wasn't responding https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18749330 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18749330
- idlewords 7y agoParts of Pinboard now are working!
- jhayward 7y agoBack when archiving was getting pretty slow / iffy my plan, which I never put in place, was to simply buy another archiving account every month until the weight of either money or guilt simply overcame whatever obstacle was keeping it from working. Many thanks for all the hard work you put in to the "other" activities you were involved in. Like, really. Thank you.
- zwaps 7y agoSome quotes from his website which is, by the way, deliciously non Javascript garbagy "The site is reliable. Outages are rare and brief. The site has servers in San Jose and Sacramento, for better resiliency in case of a California earthquake." Front page review: “One dude in his underpants somewhere who has five windows open to terminal servers.” "The site has a sane business model that would be familiar to your grandparents." "As every year, I'd like to thank all Pinboard users, old and new, for their support and their custom. I know there are lots of rival bookmarking services out there. I will consume them, one by one, like I consumed the pie." Can't really overstate the coolness of this dude
- notatoad 7y agoHe's also a great follow on twitter
- ceejayoz 7y agoEspecially when someone threatens to report him to "his boss" for poorly representing Pinboard on social media.
- driverdan 7y agoHe was great until he shifted his focus to 98% politics. Most of his posts used to be funny, now they're depressing.
- notatoad 7y agoEh. I'm not sure what the point of Twitter is if not politics
- function_seven 7y agoOh man, so much more. Humor (@loneblockbuster, @3yearletterman), earthquake news (@DrLucyJones, @DrWendyRocks), tech news or announcements (@patio11, @ircmaxell), and so on.
- 7y ago
- wyclif 7y agoWho remembers hacky, plastic lawn chair, Mac mini-era, old-school del.icio.us? Those were the days: https://live.staticflickr.com/8/10416310_7dabcdc326_b.jpg https://live.staticflickr.com/8/10416310_7dabcdc326_b.jpg
- pvg 7y agoAerons were deliberately shoved out of frame for that. The days change less than one might suspect.
- snazz 7y agoThe author is really good at writing. I read the article about December 2010 and found it equally funny and well-written as today’s article. https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/03/anatomy_of_a_crushing/ https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/03/anatomy_of_a_crushing/
- justusthane 7y agoDefinitely recommend his personal blog as well: https://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm https://idlewords.com/2016/05/shuffleboard_at_mcmurdo.htm
- sanjayts 7y agoYup; I get a strong very "P. G. Wodehouse" vibe from his writing. EDIT: After looking at his resume, I'm fairly confident his writing style is heavily inspired by Wodehouse (he mentions about Jeeves and Wooster!).
- sk5t 7y agoYes, and there are also hints of P.J. O'Rourke, I think, or perhaps a smidgen of more lighthearted Hunter Thompson.
- davidscolgan 7y ago> A one-person business is an exercise in long-term anxiety management, so I would say if you are already an anxious person, go ahead and start a business. You're not going to feel any worse. You've already got the main skill set of staying up and worrying, so you might as well make some money. This hits very close to home, guess I might as well embrace it! I'd probably be just as anxious at a normal job anyway and am determined to figure out anxiety management.
- gtirloni 7y agoIf you do, please let me know :)
- davidscolgan 7y agoOne thing that helped me recently - I realized that my work is not a reflection on my value as a human being. I grew up in a semistrict religious context, and regardless of whether it was intended, I internalized that everything I did was a reflection of my righteousness and value as a human and even to a degree my worthiness to be accepted into heaven. I've since stopped practicing that kind of religion, but I realized I have still been treating say my freelance work as a _moral_ question - if I do it right, I am good, if I mess up, or take too long, or there are bugs, my emotions still process that as if my eternal soul is at stake. Leading to, procrastination, stress, and withdrawing from communication because I'm afraid of punishment. I had some really good conversations with clients lately, just being upfront about my fears of blowing timelines and admitting to withdrawing, and they were very understanding and to hear them acknowledge that this stuff is hard and that I was doing a good job was massively motivating. Hopefully most people don't have this issue, but if you do, it was very relieving to even just realize this is what I was doing, and am working with a really good therapist and a business coach to process and work through it, and I'm already seeing a lot less stress as a result.
- wenbin 7y agoPinboard is such an inspiration to my (one-person) entrepreneur journey!
- dstaley 7y agoI loved Pinboard when I was using it, but my biggest pain point was the lack of a decent Android app. It was cumbersome to get websites from my phone's browser into Pinboard. I'd easily pay $2/month for a polished, modern Android Pinboard client.
- mevile 7y agoNevermind, my brain wasn't working.
- idlewords 7y ago$2/month * 50,000 users = $1.2M per year. Where exactly do you live where that's a year's pay?
- kej 7y agoI've been happy with PinDroid. It adds Pinboard as a share target, so you can bookmark things from any app with a share menu (including your browser, obviously). https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pindroid https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.pindroid
- dstaley 7y agoI was specifically thinking about Pindroid actually! It hasn't been updated in over two years. I had some weird issues where the back button of the share intent wouldn't correctly return me to the app I was sharing from, instead bringing me to my bookmarks. There were a few other little small things, but the fact that it's not being maintained anymore doesn't give me hope it'll ever be fixed.
- floatingatoll 7y agoThere’s always https://github.com/maxpower47/PinDroid https://github.com/maxpower47/PinDroid
- kej 7y ago
- hartator 7y ago> business is an exercise in long-term anxiety management, so I would say if you are already an anxious person, go ahead and start a business. You're not going to feel any worse. You've already got the main skill set of staying up and worrying, so you might as well make some money. Never thought about this that way!
- SanchoPanda 7y agoI find it funny that the number of tags per bookmark has been falling. I've also increasingly given up tagging things in favor of relying on global search.
- SanchoPanda 7y agoI subscribe to the blog via RSS, but it no longer updates with new posts it seems.
- slowmovintarget 7y ago"Nine Fives Software" I feel that.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- Tomte 7y ago"That is because I spent all of 2017 doing tech organizing, and then all of 2018 fundraising for the Congressional elections, and customers grew irate" Oh yes. I was so close to giving up on Pinboard and hosting my bookmarks myself. Badly, probably. I hope he doesn't find another hobby that is taking exactly 100% of his time. Since a few months everything is back to normal, and that is great. But this episode showed the transience of things.
- lifeisstillgood 7y ago>>> one-person business is an exercise in long-term anxiety management, so I would say if you are already an anxious person, go ahead and start a business. You're not going to feel any worse. You've already got the main skill set of staying up and worrying, so you might as well make some money Love it :-)
- ForrestN 7y agoHey Maciej <3 Why did revenue go down? Think it'll go back to growing in 2020?
- icebraining 7y agoThe next paragraph explains it: he lost users due to being focused on other things, now he'll try to win them back.
- slim 7y agoit does not look like revenue is going down. he has made 222 in 2019 while we're still 6 months from the end of the year.
- idlewords 7y agoNo, the revenue is for the completed preceding year.
- Wump 7y agoI would love to read a book or longer-form content written by this author. His writing is just really funny, while also being sort of philosophical and semi-informative. Love it.
- neilk 7y agoYou’re in luck: https://idlewords.com https://idlewords.com
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- _pmf_ 7y agoThank you for you work and please avoid those buses. signed, an anxious customer
- slyall 7y agoI use it casually. I got one of the "lifetime" accounts so it doesn't cost me anything and I put the odd bookmark into it. Best tool for the cost. I wasn't really sure about recommending it to other people though since it felt like it was being neglected (I have a pet bug on the site that is 2 years old - probably a wontfix ). Feels better that he's giving it a bit more love. I used to follow him on twitter but I get enough US politics already without following somebody who tweets about it 24x7.
- ernsheong 7y agoI'm Jonathan, founder of PageDash, a Pinboard alternative. If you are looking for a Pinboard alternative, do try out https://www.PageDash.com https://www.PageDash.com (free tier of 30MB/month storage). Essentially, PageDash archives full pages for $29/year. We have been in business since 2017. Open to feedback. Thanks!
- dylkil 7y ago>You could buy products and services with Bitcoin. love this, author is fully aware how bitcoin adoption has backpeddled after the core devs refused to lift the limit of the block size
- formatkaka 7y agoGreat blog! For anyone using Pinboard, Why would I use it instead of pocket? I have been using pocket for a while and the overall feature set and mobile/browser support is great.
- tedmiston 7y agoCheck out https://pinboard.in/tour/ https://pinboard.in/tour/. Pinboard's feature set is more geared towards bookmark management which happens to have a read later integration. It's quite different than Pocket.
- adnans 7y agoI use pinboard daily, not so much to save bookmarks but to browse new content. I wrote a small hacky script to filter out links on "recent" page with more than X amount of other users that have it bookmarked too. It's not all new content but if people are bookmarking it, it must be at least worth a look.
- hutzlibu 7y ago"you have to help your fate along" Good old grandfatherknowledge. Reminded me of, "the gods help those, who help themself". Usually nice things do not get presented on a silver plate to you. You have to act.
- shaunpud 7y agoThis community is so toxic! One minute something doesn't look "awesome" so it's shite, next minute something looks "plain jane" and it's amazing. Seriously guys, if this site was launched today it would be ripped to shreds, but it isn't, obviously because it does it's job, and is well known on HN, but if someone was to launch a bookmarking service with no react this and javascript that, it would be shot down so hard. Fuck this, so many ideas people have but don't want to progress because of Silicocks. P.S. I'm a paid member, and it's awesome!
- maciej4ever 7y agoOMG maciej UR so cool. Post more blogs on UR blog. Wow.
- fastbmk 7y agoTry https://fastbmk.com/ https://fastbmk.com/ It's a free alternative :)