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Ask HN: What Happened to Pinboard (April '22 edition)?
There have been threads like this before (last one in 1.5 months ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30628375 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!
- LeoPanthera 4y agoI 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 4y agoSame, 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 4y agobest $6,28 i ever spent.
- HAL9OOO 4y agoFound 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.
- carom 4y agoI saw his tweets fall off. I hope he is alright.
- Cenk 4y agoHe’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 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 https://twitter.com/Pinboard/status/1476079701978345472
- throwanem 4y agoThat 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 4y agoIt works fine on https:// https://, so it looks like he just didn't configure Apache correctly. Strange either way.
- tqkxzugoaupvwqr 4y agoDoesn’t inspire confidence in the quality of the service.
- gerikson 4y agoBoy 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 4y agoYeah 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.
- ggpsv 4y agoNot sure what's up with Pinboard but yesterday he published a new post on his personal blog so it looks like he is around.
- derekjobst 4y agoIs 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
- heliostatic 4y agoYes it is, in many formats: https://pinboard.in/settings/backup https://pinboard.in/settings/backup
- kappuchino 4y agoHere is your page: https://pinboard.in/settings/backup https://pinboard.in/settings/backup
- derekjobst 4y agoThanks!
- kasey_junk 4y agohttps://pinboard.in/export/ https://pinboard.in/export/
- pronoiac 4y agoI was able to export my bookmarks, but not my archived tweets; I got a 500 for the latter.
- jacknews 4y agoCan you export tab sets? I find having bookmarks in context with related things open at the time to be quite valuable.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- dismantlethesun 4y agoI bought a yearly package after listening to rave reviews and almost immediately felt remorseful. It’s feels like an abandoned product.
- ihodes 4y agoI absolutely love Pinboard, seems like hiring one person to attend the support queue would solve >80% of the problem.
- kashunstva 4y ago> 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.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- ghoomketu 4y agoThis particular blog post (1) is always posted on HN as a reminder that when you pay for a product you get good service. Yet my own experience has been same as others here, and I called it quits when I couldn't access the services because their DNS had expired. https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/ https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/
- boneidlewords 4y ago
- benrapscallion 4y agoThis is absolutely true.
- seibelj 4y agoBitcoin still doing fine, Pinboard disappears https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27234078 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27234078
- zorbash 4y agoShameless plug: I run https://tefter.io https://tefter.io a pinboard alternative which supports importing your bookmarks from pinboard and even has team collaboration features.
- kappuchino 4y agoNo 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#bookmarks-and-link-sharing https://github.com/awesome-selfhosted/awesome-selfhosted#boo...)
- zorbash 4y agoHey, for a fair comparison with pinboard you should check out our personal pricing plans, https://www.tefter.io/personal https://www.tefter.io/personal which start from $9/year. The 39$/month you mentioned is for team workspaces of unlimited members.
- platz 4y agoI have an even cheaper service for you, an open-source self-hosted bookmarking service (Espial) that can import from pinboard export files. https://github.com/jonschoning/espial https://github.com/jonschoning/espial
- plainolrandy 4y agoMy 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 4y agoI'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 4y agoI 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 4y agoWould it be possible to consolidate all the "what happened to Pinboard" threads in one place? It would greatly reduce my workload!
- MollyRealized 4y agoOr, 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 4y agoThis guy has a habit of making fun of those who criticize him after paying him.
- tsg 4y agoI 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 4y agoI'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).
- temp12192021 4y agoRun of the mill narcissism.
- gaws 4y agoPinboard has really gone to shit. I terminated my account a few months ago and switched to espial. No regrets.