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'My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT' (pinboard.in)
Like many of you, I use IFTTT. It's one of the handiest tools on the internet to get your work done. Want a text alert for weather? Want a notification on your Android smartphone whenever someone you follow publishes a blog post? IFTTT can do all sorts of such things. It is able to do so because it works with different companies and utilizes APIs of their services. Many of these companies are happy to have IFTTT trying to enhance the experience of their customers. Many don't necessarily want -- or can allow -- IFTTT to do that. Pinboard, a social bookmarking website, falls in the latter category. Maciej Ceglowski, CEO of Pinboard in a blog post explained why that is the case: Imagine if your sewer pipe started demanding that you make major changes in your diet. Now imagine that it got a lawyer and started asking you to sign things. You would feel surprised. This is the position I find myself in today with IFTTT, a form of Internet plumbing that has been connecting peaceably to my backend for the past five years, but which has recently started sending scary emails. [...] Because many of you rely on IFTTT, and because [their request] makes it sound like I'm the asshole, I feel I should explain myself. In a nutshell: 1. IFTTT wants me to do their job for them for free. 2. They have really squirrely terms of service. In the blog post, Ceglowski further explains his concerns with IFTTT. He says IFTTT wants ownership of all right, title, and interest. "Pinboard is in some ways already a direct competitor to IFTTT. The site offers built-in Twitter integration, analogous to IFTTT's twitter-Pinboard recipe. I don't know what rights I would be assigning here, but this is not the way I want to find out." You should read the blog post, it's very insightful and sheds light on things that many of us might not have considered otherwise. Jason Snell has offered his take on this as well, he writes: If IFTTT sticks with this philosophy, it will rapidly become a lot less useful and interesting as a service.
Goodwill can be hard to get back. Tread lightly IFTTT.
For the curious, "IFTTT" is an Android app ("If This, Then That") which allows one to make scripts for chaining other app functions together. Of course, it's mostly for noobs because real men use BusyBox to make cron scripts with Android's API.
This acronym is mentioned no less then 12 times in the summary. And yet I still have no fucking clue what it is or what it does.
Perhaps someone here could enlighten me?
> Many don't necessarily want -- or can allow -- IFTTT to do that. . Pinboard, a social bookmarking website, falls in the latter category.
No, Pinboard already has perfectly working IFTTT support. IFTTT want to break this unless Pinboard develop to their custom API and sign a large legal document.
Did Maciej Ceglowski just use an analogy in which his users live in a sewer and his content is the shit he flushes down the drain?
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
You know, reading that, it's hard not to think IFTTT (which I've never heard of) are being the dicks here ... YOU wrote a tool which scrapes content from other sites, and now YOU want THEM to conform to your API, as well as preventing 3rd parties from using your shit? And possibly give YOU rights to THEIR content and retain the right to change the license? Good luck with that.
This sounds like an illegal squatter suing the property owner to upgrade the plumbing and fix the leaky roof.
What, exactly, is IFTTT offering in return other than to say "in order to allow our users to access your site with our stuff, you have to agree to the following". Why would anybody accept random terms and conditions by a third party who merely redistributes your own stuff is a mystery to me.
Sorry, this sounds like a bit of bullshit shakedown, and expecting someone to take steps to support your stuff ... my answer would be to ignore them as well.
Everything about this sounds like childish, petulant and over-reaching behavior in which the 3rd party service is asserting some form of control over the original service so the 3rd party can retain their users. What makes you think the original service owes you a damned thing?
Two words: Fuck that.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
Just one question...
What the bloody hell is IFTTT?
Like many of you, I use IFTTT.
I think you've overestimated.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
For those of you geeks who see an abrevation they've never heard of and that is presented as some super high-tech thing that you should know (I know, I've had the same problem):
IFTTT (if this then that) is a commercial web service (free as in beer, but they want all your data, like Google or Facebook) that hooks together a slew of popular other services using API calls and probably a little scraping aswell to automate tasks and data migration using a neat and shiny web-based click-ui. Think Apples Automator on OS X, but for all those shiny Web SaaS thingies hippsters get a hard-on about these days.
The wannabees like to throw around "IFTTT" because it sounds really nerdy, geeky and high-tech and they get all giddy when their Linux admin looks really confused having never heard the word. But don't worry, they just use it to send smilies on facebook whenever they've taken a picture in instagram and stuff like that. Your Perl & Python scripts are just as indespensible as always - so no trouble here.
Glad I could help.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
State that any future use of content from X website constitutes an agreement to pay reasonable royalties for all content used and that IFTTT agrees to pay all attorneys fees and court costs that are related to X website's dealings with IFTTT, including any collection activities and including any legal action between X website and IFTTT.
after reading the summary, reading the comments, and reading the summary again, i still don't get it.
what's a solution one would build with ifttt? why would i want to use it? is this one of those things that only make sense after you've decided that you want to be completely dependent on saas?
The good thing about IFTTT is that it is so simplistic that it will be easy to replace when something better comes around.
IF That Then Fuckoff.
Hang on, was this posted directly be the new editor? I don't see a related submission or a referenced user?
I used IFTTT for all of about twenty seconds. It seemed interesting but once you advance beyond "take this data and send it to Twitter, take that data and send it to Facebook", it becomes useless. I wanted to use my smartphone's built-in abilities more and IFTTT wasn't giving me the capabilities. I found an app called Automate that lets you set up a process flow to do things such as upload to Google Drive or an FTP server, send e-mails, take photos with the camera, etc.
Wisely, the app comes with minimal permissions and you need to enable further permissions as scripts require them. For example, I wrote a script that takes a photo of someone if they don't put in my correct unlock code and e-mails that photo to me. Of course, before this script could work, I needed to grant Automate access to my camera. If I remove the script, I can easily disable the access and keep Automate from accessing the camera in the future. Much more powerful than IFTTT.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Wisely, the app comes with minimal permissions and you need to enable further permissions as scripts require them.
How does that work on devices to which Android 6 "Marshmallow" (with its fine-grained permissions framework) has not yet been ported?
Firehose. Use it.
I mainly use IFTTT in concert with my Hue lighting (which is all through my house). Here are my main observations:
1. It is _really_ slow. Like terribly slow. I have a Recipe on there to change the color of my lights when my favorite football team starts a game... it usually changes the lights sometime during the second quarter! Useless
2. The fact that there is only one "if" clause damns it into being just a "toy". For instance, it can turn my lights on and off as I come and go from my house. Awesome, right? NO. It doesn't take into account that _other_ people live in the house! There is no way to say "if I come home and no one else is there turn on the lights". This leads to situations like me getting back from hanging out with my friends at 1AM and IFTTT happily blasting all the lights in our house while my wife is trying to sleep!
IFTTT is a toy. It's a poor toy at that.
Pinboard CEO explains how his company literally shits in IFTTT mouth.
Best CEO statement I have ever seen.
IFTTT: Dey eat de poo poo!
I clicked on this story because of the acronym, something I've never heard of & figured I'd learn something. I did: that authors continue to write to themselves. Forgetting that when talking to others, it is polite (and necessary) to prep the topic a tiny bit. Not starting up in chapter three of the book you are reading (and assuming we're all reading too).
An honest "thanks" from random readers everywhere :)
I know a lot of you are confused at what IFTTT is, but I myself have heard of/use and know many, many people who know of and use it a lot. In comparison, I myself and no one I talked to has ever used or even heard of Pinboard. I just want to ask, while a lot of people were mostly confused by the IFTTT acronym, how many of you have even heard of Pinboard prior to this drama? Because to me it seems like Pinboard pretty much depends on services like IFTTT to be used often, if at all, because of IFTTT's popularity/functionality. And that Pinboard is just crying now because IFTTT wants them to comply with their API if they want to keep using their service. I do admit the whole giving up rights issue seems sketchy, but other than that it feels like Pinboard is just pissed because now their service will likely die out. I could be wrong though, Pinboard could be a service that's even more popular than IFTTT for all I know, I'm just saying I've heard of IFTTT a lot whereas I've never heard of Pinboard prior to this post.
I immediately clicked on the link mistakenly seeing what I thought was going to be a discussion advocating avoiding inverse fast fourier transforms.
I couldn't agree more, these convoluted summaries are confusing me on a periodic basis. I mean, this whole subject is no less than orthogonal to fast fourier transforms. That CEO they're quoting? He's not even trying to save phase.
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So there's another reason to be worried then. In your example you are having IFTTT move pictures from Dropbox to Evernote. But the IFTTT license terms shown on the blog show IFTTT asserting ownership not just of their APIs but also of any content that moves across them. From the blog -
"3. Ownership. IFTTT shall own all right, title, and interest (and all related moral rights and intellectual property rights) in and to the Developer Tool, Service, and Content."
So if they own all content that moves through their API, do they now 'own' your photos? Can they even do that? Most web pages assert that content belongs to the poster. So can a 3rd party service have that web page sign ownership away of data it does not own? (i.e - Your tweets don't belong to Twitter. They belong to you. So Twitter can't grant ownership of them to IFTTT). Looking at their end-user license terms (https://ifttt.com/terms) they seem to acknowledge this (sort of) -
"Copying or storing of any Content for other than personal, noncommercial use is expressly prohibited without prior written permission from IFTTT or from the copyright holder identified in such Content's copyright notice. You shall abide by all copyright notices, information, and restrictions contained in any Content accessed through the Services."
Get permission from us OR the copyright holder?!?! So presumably you could grant yourself permission to use your own photos. This doesn't mean that IFTTT couldn't also use those photos as it looks like you've granted them that right by gracing their network with it. This all sounds very, very shady...
Opening statements such as "Like many of you, I use IFTTT" are some what irritating. I do not use this tool.
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This is the first I've heard of IFTTT, and I'm wary of it because I'm not sure if I'm being COND.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
Silly me, I misread this as a stand against the IFFT and curious to understand how laziness plays a role. My mistake is now corrected, and I see that whatever TFA is about, it's much less important than I thought at first.
That's simply a fantastic trashing of a silly move. Quoting the ruinous parts of their secretive agreement is just icing on the cake. Absolutely brutal.
Well, if it wasn't for this article I'd never had heard of Pinboard, so that's something IFTTT did for them. Not that I really care...
I'm using pinboard for several years, after all crapy-hip-social-discovery bookmarking sites started to go nuts i was happy to find a product that does what it says, and does it good.And don't change with every wind! So those IFTTT hipster leechers can go f... themselves for all i care
If [my phone = blackberry] Then [ignore this article]
Blatant product advert is blatant.
~ People that think they are better than anyone else for any reason are the cause of all the strife in the world.
In other words, you implemented the plug-in model where each app provides a service to the main app. But how does your main app trigger the installation of sub-apps on the user's device? I thought the user had to confirm installation of all packages through the Google Play Store app unless the user turns on developer-oriented options, such as "Unknown sources" or "Enable USB debugging". Or does turning on a feature that requires a sub-app present a notice of what is about to happen next and then take the user to the sub-app's page in Google Play Store to complete the installation?
Like many of you, I use IFTTT. It's one of the handiest tools on the internet to NOT get your work done. Want a text alert for weather? Want a notification on your Android smartphone whenever someone you follow publishes a blog post?
FTFY
IFT, PFFT whatever it is called ... Most people do not use it
Going by the extracts, the agreement out to him might not do what he says it does.
There might be diverting in the definitions that changes that, but I doubt it. More likely, this guy is just being a jerk who is too cheap to pay a lawyer to review the agreement and advise him, even though it seems he has the money to do so.
From TFA, it seems that IFTTT has just gotten it's hands on done venture capital. One of the first things incoming venture capital will do is require regularisation of important ad hoc legal relationships (including making sure that all necessary copyright licences are in place), so this change would not be unexpected.
You might have mistaken. This isn't my app. This was developed by someone else (LlamaLab). I just downloaded and used the app.
As far as prompts go, I have to correct my previous statement. (I was typing from memory.) I just looked it up and there are separate apps for things like "Automate Network", "Automate Storage", "Automate location", etc. Each app has permissions just for it's particular area and each app is listed in the Google Play store. The overarching Automate app simplifies the install by not requiring you to search for the particular app to be installed to get the required permissions. Instead, you click a "Get these permissions" button and a standard Google Play install/permissions prompt appears. Once it's done, the button changes to "Remove these permissions" which will let you uninstall the app if you want to revoke the permissions.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
Why is it Pinboard should be doing any agreement at all with IFTTT? It's nice that they have money now, but they want him to do work and make promises while they sit on their asses. They have apparently told the users that the Pinboard interface is going down if Pinboard doesn't do something, but they've given Pinboard NO reason to do anything but mock them.
Sorry, if they were asking Pinboard for a promise to give notice before changing Pinboard's API? Perhaps that might be reasonable for Pinbaord to consider. Asking Pinboard to implement IFTTT's API for free? Not reasonable.
A thousand pounds of wood moving at 300 feet per minute. Don't get in the way.
Not that I use it, but IFTTT should work on a Priv just fine, and probably on a Q10, Z30, or Passport if it's running 10.3.
Probably just by launching; market://details?id=<package_name>. If the phone has "unknown sources" turned on, you could save the apk to the sdcard and launch the file url. Perhaps using a content provider to stream the apk directly from your assets folder.
09F91102 no, 455FE104 nope, F190A1E8 uh-uh, 7A5F8A09 that's not it, C87294CE no. Ah! 452F6E403CDF10714E41DFAA257D313F.
Yet another "entitled" idiot. The regularizing of relationships and copyright licenses are for IFTTT's purposes, not for Pinboard's. Pinboard has no obligation to accept any business proposal, and certainly no obligation to spend time and/or money considering one. If IFTTT wants an agreement, IFTTT needs to make it worth Pinboard's while to consider it. This includes not making a prima facie unacceptable first offer.
Just because your new VCs say you need something is not a reason for me to give it to you.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
As a long time Pinboard user and short time IFTTT user I will be deleting my IFTTT account in support of Pinboard.
I've been meaning to delete my IFTTT account for awhile now and this gives me to principle choice to do it. I've always been nervous about having so many of my accounts and even real world devices (e.g. thermostat, security system) tied to IFTTT. If that one account was hacked they could wreak havoc on a lot of my digital life as well as my house!
IFTTT seemed okay, but that whole free means you are the product bit always made me a little leary.
Yahoo Pipes used to be okay for this kind of stuff before it died (wow, now that needs a proper open source replacement)
Zapier seems alright, if you pay a little for it.