I think he goes out of his way to underpromise reliability and longevity, but the fact is that this will never make people less upset (and reasonably so, in my view) when the service goes down or loses data or disappears forever.
Compare it to a common sentiment I saw on HN recently, which is that selling a self-driving car kit is irresponsible even if you technically have some shrink wrap agreement that says “this isn’t a real product, use at your own risk.”
I don’t know where the line is in each case, but I think that there is some responsibility one takes on when one accepts money from the public for a product, and no amount of cute warnings makes that responsibility go away.
Anyone can promise anything they want. I prefer to lean on my track record. Not a lot of sites can brag about staying continuously online and not losing data for over a decade (exceptions include stavros right here on HN, who runs a competing site to mine). Pinboard is certainly business performance art, but part of the schtick is taking it seriously.
> Compare it to a common sentiment I saw on HN recently, which is that selling a self-driving car kit is irresponsible even if you technically have some shrink wrap agreement that says “this isn’t a real product, use at your own risk.”
I don't think this example is comparable. Most obviously, the effects of failure in Pinboard vs a self driving car kit are vastly different.
Compare it to a common sentiment I saw on HN recently, which is that selling a self-driving car kit is irresponsible even if you technically have some shrink wrap agreement that says “this isn’t a real product, use at your own risk.”
I don’t know where the line is in each case, but I think that there is some responsibility one takes on when one accepts money from the public for a product, and no amount of cute warnings makes that responsibility go away.