I’m a longtime fan of Maciej, and a regular-ish user of Pinboard for a decade-plus. We have friends in common. I hesitate to support this effort.
What I appreciate the most is how he is an example of how to escape the tech rat race. And how he’s been able to live his values and get involved in important political issues. I thought it was worth supporting a contrarian, hardworking indie dev and rationalized away all the numerous bugs, reliability issues, and just plain missing features.
And I’d probably still be a supporter if he hadn’t bragged, on multiple occasions around 2017-8, that there were years where he literally did nothing on Pinboard. I still admire that in a way - it should be possible to say that software is done, it doesn’t have to be ever-expanding. But I don’t love it as a user. Now every time I enter a bookmark I’m annoyed that (for instance) it won’t even prefetch the title for me.
I suppose it is foolish to expect any contrition, but I feel like I was lied to.
Pinboard is like Newton's conception of the divine, if an active Creator were not constantly involved, the whole thing would grind to a halt instantly. So I would take whatever I said about taking years off with that grain of salt.
I don't understand the bit about not pre-fetching a title. Are you using the add URL page or something, rather than a bookmarklet or extension, which does exactly that?
Extensions and bookmarklets I’ve used break eventually. I don’t recall any official bookmarklet that prefetched titles. Apps I’ve used go unmaintained and accumulate weird bugs (Pushpin, for instance, now hides the first result of a search under its interface, and updating the local db seems to be broken at times). The website on mobile might as well be microfiche.
In my experience the only thing that works every time is the add url page and the desktop website. If this is deprecated and there’s a better way, that wasn’t clear to me.
I’m fully aware this is part of the deal. And at least you haven’t had an our-incredible-journey post, unlike most of your competitors. It’s not been fun for me lately though.
Both the extensions and bookmarklets automatically parse the title out of the page. Maybe we're talking about different things?
There's been a mobile-friendly website (m.pinboard.in) for a decade, and I'm folding it into the regular site now that I've convinced myself mobile phones aren't just a fad.
Broken apps by third parties you can't really pin on me. Though I hope that world will get more vibrant when there's an improved API.
What I appreciate the most is how he is an example of how to escape the tech rat race. And how he’s been able to live his values and get involved in important political issues. I thought it was worth supporting a contrarian, hardworking indie dev and rationalized away all the numerous bugs, reliability issues, and just plain missing features.
And I’d probably still be a supporter if he hadn’t bragged, on multiple occasions around 2017-8, that there were years where he literally did nothing on Pinboard. I still admire that in a way - it should be possible to say that software is done, it doesn’t have to be ever-expanding. But I don’t love it as a user. Now every time I enter a bookmark I’m annoyed that (for instance) it won’t even prefetch the title for me.
I suppose it is foolish to expect any contrition, but I feel like I was lied to.