alt Hacker NewsTindie store under "scheduled maintenance" for days
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I don't have the links handy but I believe there are some comments from staff on social media that give more details.
There are a number of things on Tindie that I have been unable to find anywhere else at any price. (Mostly small batch bespoke electronics.) I hope they figure this out.
Scheduled maintenance in 2026 is insane
Unfortunate. Tindie is (was?) a pretty unique marketplace. Amusingly, a lot of what they were selling was probably illegal due to FCC rules: for the most part, you can't sell electronics without EMI certification and "I'm just a hobbyist" is not an excuse. Kits get a bit of leeway, but finished products don't.
Before the tariffs, I noticed that Chinese companies were trying to undercut them. I've gotten multiple mails asking me to start selling my designs with China-based outlets: they would make the PCBs, assemble them, and pay me some money for every item sold.
About Sunday/Monday last week right before it went down I noticed the site was supper buggy and failing to add things to cart, I emailed support and got a "we are checking the issue". Since it went down all I've heard from support is "Please be patient. Tindie will be back up soon as we are currently performing maintenance. At this time, we do not have an estimated timeframe to provide."
The fact that it wasn't communicated at all prior and not having a timeframe makes me thing this was probably an ops screw up.
Concerning, a professional development team should have been able to manage this switch with minimal to no downtime. Makes me wonder what other mistakes they're making. I'm reluctant to trust my payment information with them in the future.
I've bought some cool stuff off Tindie. My latest purchase was this set of earrings that alert when you're near a Flock camera
Yeah this sucks, I have a bunch of hobbyist orders stuck in limbo since last week -- customers have paid, but I can't pull the orders down even through the API.
I really like Tindie as a platform and have been using it since nearly the beginning...but I'd have lost the contract if I pulled this level of nonsense on a customer's production application.
They must have really bungled something if they can't roll back and get the site operational again.
:( I really like Tindie and what they're doing
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> The goal of the current maintenance is to fix a lot of long-standing issues with the site. The underlying infrastructure was getting very fragile as technical debt accumulated over time. A team is working very hard right now to make sure that once the site is back up, it's on much better footing and will be solid and reliable for the long term. Despite the unfortunate amount of time this is taking, it will be a major benefit to the site in the long run.
If I were a developer there I would be feeling really not very good. Minutes of downtime on the systems I’ve worked on gets my heart rate going.