skysight-inc/HackerNews huggingface dataset:
I don't think we know enough about the OP's market and competition to be able to agree with the title's conclusion...as others have pointed out, the OP may have just been underpriced to begin with.

An obvious counterpoint: I doubt higher prices has any correlation with sales numbers in the iOS market. And while there are successful high-priced games (Minecraft at $6.99), that's because they are high quality games. I think Minecraft would undoubtedly sell more units if it were at $2.99.

Another thing to consider is the psychological "anchor effect"; Dan Kahneman (Nobel Prize in Economics) conducted a famous experiment in which college students were influenced by a number they knew to be completely random:

Amos and I once rigged a wheel of fortune. It was marked
from 0 to 100, but we had it built so that it would stop
only at 10 or 65. We recruited students of the
University of Oregon as participants in our experiment.
One of us would stand in front of a small group, spin
the wheel, and ask them to write down the number on
which the wheel stopped, which of course was either 10
or 65.

We then asked them 2 questions:

1. Is the percentage of African nations among UN members larger or smaller than the number you just wrote?

2. What is your best guess of the percentage of African nations in the UN?

The spin of a wheel of fortune – even one that is not
rigged – cannot possibly yield useful information about
anything, and the participants in our experiment should
simply have ignored it. But they did not ignore it. The
average estimates of those who saw 10 and 65 were
25% and 45%, respectively.

From "Thinking Fast, and Slow"
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00555X8OA/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...

The summary: there is room in setting initial prices to convince people think they should be paying a higher price.
The Japanese postal service beats the USPS hands down fwiw.
Thanks, fixing that!
'cuase I gave up on a couple open source projects I started because bug tracking and feature request tracking was eating up a lot of time and taking away from coding (or even fixing bugs).
Hopefully someone else can chime in here, I sold my car last year in favor of public transportation. But there is a commuter train from Providence to Boston and it should arrive in South Station which is connected to the red line and only 3-5 stops away from south station.

It may actually be cheaper/faster than driving. I don't know what time trains come back though. You will need to check on that so you don't get stuck in Boston.
USPS needs to fund the promises it is making to its employees, especially when those promises will eventually cost nearly $50 billion. The retiree health care benefit is unique to postal workers, which is why USPS claims the burden is unique, but that's a pretty dishonest description of the situation.
I'd say just jump in. The documentation are top notch. If you've used Rails it will feel very familiar to you. I'd say in an afternoon, if you have experience building web apps, you'll be up to speed.
Thanks for the tip on holo! And yeah, my end game is to kind of get together a bunch of apps that are useful for racecar builders. All of them together, well tested and well explained, might be worth someone paying for.
I think Canada Post should switch to 3 day delivery for residential addresses. Given the push to electronic bills and payments (many companies charge extra if you opt for a paper bill) 90% of whats in my mailbox is junk mail. Improved parcel service would be nice however, online shopping should be increasing interest in that product.
This may very well be a way to intentionally hurt or change USPS for the benefit of UPS and FedEx, or some other business interest (via corporate lobbyists). Or is being done for leverage.

Because it's the only way this all makes sense.

And contrary to popular belief that the people in charge are idiots that lack common sense, there is almost always a much deeper and well-thought-out strategy and story behind these types of situations.

On the other hand ... this could be afterall rather simple, and the media is making it out to be something it's not. That happens often too.
Interesting point on the "too much market", thank you.

Am I right that there is a hidden assumption in there, saying "you're too stupid, we know better, let us protect you from making voluntary deals with other parties"? That sounds like a horrible premise for any kind of governance, and possibly a self-fulfilling prophecy.
(hah! are we there yet? people under so many well-meant regulations that we're becoming irresponsibly naive and stupid?)

Or maybe, coming from Eastern Europe, I am just too allergic to the we-know-better-than-you-what-you-need central planning.

Re. "Oxford! Cambridge!" etc. -- the fact there are excellent universities all over the world doesn't affect (much less invalidate) the claim that the top universities are predominantly American.

I agree that the distribution of quality when it comes to universities is uneven -- but so what? I find that natural. This idea that all universities should somehow be uniform and on the same level makes me, once again, shudder. What's next? All cities should be the same size, so everybody has the same opportunity to find a job? Think of the poor village children!
So you want 23 year olds who graduated valedictorians of their universities, have PhDs, are accomplished quantum physicists, capable of answering complex computer science interview questions, familiar with statistics, and can explain the causes of the subprime mortgage crisis?

Why set your bar so low?
> Trouble is work gets me so down I can barely look at a
computer at the end of the day to push it along further.

Please do not take this the wrong way (esp with my other post) but it sounds like work might not be the cause of you feeling down at the end of the day - have you considered that you may be suffering from a depression. Especially in SAD-central January.

I have been there, maybe I still am, but its just a thought and it may well be worth opening up to your doctor.

And remember free, over the Internet, psychological advice is worth every penny :-)
Discussed in the comments on jwz's post, where several people say claims of ImageMagick's death are greatly exaggerated, and it has actually fixed bugs that still exist in GraphicsMagick.
I use GitHub to track issues for pressureNET. When I find a bug, I log it there. Others have logged bugs there too. I pay attention and respond to every user who reports something is wrong, fix the bugs as fast as I can and send out the updates. Updating pressureNET causes a significant drop in measurements per hour since the update stops the old code. So I lose data when I fix bugs. But I still track them and still fix them because improving the software is important.

Don't rant and be rude to all open source projects because you're obsessed with a few poorly run projects. Open source is in a better position than ever when it comes to developer accountability and bug fixing.
Offering less to settle the debt in full is an excellent suggestion. As patio11 pointed out they probably bought this debt for very little.

One thing to remember, though: you're dealing with bottom feeders here so get any deal in writing before you send any money and never give them electronic access to your account or they'll clean you out.

Also once you've got the written agreement make sure you save it forever. Debt collectors resell debts all the time and you're just one line in a big spreadsheet - very easy to accidentally end up in the wrong file. If someone else turns up trying to collect this debt you'll want to have proof that it's been settled.
This is what I realized. I did what a "successful" college grad is supposed to do: I joined a large company right after college and started a career. Problem was, I got screwed around by them and quit after six months (finishing up my two weeks notice right now).

Part of this is that I picked a bad company to join (they had me filling out dozens of meeting invites in Outlook and doing SAP data entry when I was supposedly hired as a developer) but I also spent those six months really thinking about what I wanted to do on a day-to-day basis and where I wanted to end up in 5, 10, 20 years. I realized that I wasn't creating anything, I was just following a process. Filling out database table request forms and bashing my head over trying to explain a cursor to a supposedly senior developer.

So I quit after saving up about a year's living expenses and I'm going to use the next year to figure something out, not sure what just yet. I've been kicking around a few ideas and we're going to start talking to potential customers at the end of the month.

I'll probably end up burning through my savings and going out to find another job a year from now but at least I'll have tried. If I don't do something creative I feel like I'm going to forget how. Five years from now I think I'll regret not trying more than I'll enjoy the fruits of a five-year-old career.
As long as you're willing to go through the early phases of sucking at things during adulthood you'll be fine. Most people are uncomfortable sucking at things any other time than childhood. Get rid of that limitation and your whole life is time to grow not just coast.
Some people do need to hear this though. I spent ages 15-23 playing video games for hours. I could have learned programming in that time. (Probably would have, if someone had told me that programming existed)

It was fun at the time, but not really fun to reminisce on (unlike partying, which I don't regret). If I could say two things to my younger self, 'ditch video games and do something with more value' would be the second.
1) don't use Mac OS
2) don't use Eclipse IDE

Fixed?
Moving the workspace/Plasma to Qt Quick was an excellent choice.

BTW I love the PicMi game included in KDE Games!

http://kde.org/announcements/4.10/applications.php
UPS and FedEx also have complete nationwide delivery that includes unprofitable places. In fact, both private delivery companies come to my rural doorstep while the USPS won't deliver to my home at all.
A heavy-metal band, Compressorhead, consists of only robots.
Remember when you paid for software?
As others have pointed out there are a lot of excuses in this post and I don't really understand. The line about being indispensable has been address so I'll focus on "looking in this job climate".

Looking is fairly inexpensive and near risk free. Why wouldn't you just be casually looking until you found the right job?
High court and low court? What are you talking about?
It's a union with half a million employees. Congressman Issa is a Republican who hates unions. That's all he needs to know. Really, I don't think there's any deeper analysis than that.

People really don't understand the ideology level of the typical Republican in Congress. Ideology is first and foremost; good governance is not even a consideration.
This isn't the generalized case, is it? This is just a short list of open source projects to stop using/replace.
How to fix a corrupted JavaScriptCore.framework on Mac OS X 10.7.5
The Microsoft Surface Pro Proves That The PC Is Back
This has been a personal favorite of mine. I often write snippets of it on post it notes around my desk..."go placidly amid the noise and haste..."
Try Discourse
Sounds like he's trying to report bugs in projects that are either dead,half-dead or just the work of one guy as a side project.

Before you start using an OS project for anything serious, take a look at their forums, bug databases and repos.

Is there active discussion from more than 2 or 3 people? Are there regular commits? How are they handling bugs?

I've considered open sourcing code that I have written in the past, mainly stuff I built for one project where it serves the purposes of that project fine. In such a case handling bug reports from users trying to do different stuff with it would realistically just be a low priority.

jwz rants always make me feel that the author is somehow bitter about the world not revolving around his needs.
The problem here is that the modern company embodies a lot of the principles of medieval serfdom.

Serfs occupied a portion of land and owed a portion of their crops to the lord of the manor or their feudal lord. It was slavery in all but name.

The modern company is a kingdom. Managers are feudal lords. Managers can decide to hire (and fire) employees such that the employee is essentially beholden to that manager. Employment status is analagous to the land serfs worked.

The problem is that most companies have little internal mobility. If you don't get on with your manager the best thing for you and the company is to work for a different manager yet most companies make this exceedingly difficult.

At Google, individual engineers are far more empowered than that. There is a strong internal process for simply changing projects.

Also, most companies have performance feedback come solely from managers. Managers are an important source at Google but peer feedback carries a huge amount of weight.

So in many companies employees leave because they can't escape their feudal lord. I get it. The problem here is corporate feudalism.

Companies need to stop making it easier to move to a better team or getting a pay raise by leaving the company rather than moving within the company.
What's the difference between "git" and "git.install", or between "7zip" and "7zip.install"? It seems that there's a dependence between the bare-named package and the "install" package, but the package description doesn't explain which one I should use if I just want the familiar app.
If I leave my company they would simply have to drop the system I basically made on my own.

Not saying it cannot be done, but it would lose them a ton of money. Yep, it's a double-edge sword because it puts a non-trivial amount of pressure over me. Even if they found someone with the rare combination of skills required, it would set them back years in the most optimistic scenario.

So yeah, "indispensable" people do exist. In the sense that you can lose big by parting ways with some people and not effectively replace them. Obviously life would go on, eh.
Seems like we need more Open Source QA people to confirm bugs or gather missing info. Developers aren't necessarily capable of (for lack of want) or good at doing that.
The same thing occurred to me as a possibility, but saying that "it seems they are doin this" is way stronger than what we can conclude from this article. Do you have any evidence beyond "hey, this could happen"?
Sony Rolls Out Android 4.1.2 Jelly Bean Update for Xperia T and Xperia V
Show HN: Hacker's HTML and CSS editor with Data URI. Sans JS.
Overall it has gotten much easier to report bugs and submit patches to open source projects, and I give that credit to Github.

It comes down to friction: even if your system is better, it still means I need to learn your system before I can usefully contribute. If you're using a well-known system I'm much more likely to bother contributing back.
This is an amazing effort by an amazing team. I have been using Play exclusively for two years now and each version keeps getting better and better
After reading this article, it has become clear to me that I would never want to work for this guy.
Cisco: Global Mobile Data Traffic Forecast Update, 2012–2017
Yes, culture change is hard.

The OCAI is a tool, like the Myers-Briggs. The book I read [1] treated it as a start for diagnosing your organizational culture, then provided a framework for accomplishing cultural change. I believe it's extraordinarily dangerous to approach (organizational) change without treating it as a process with defined goals.

BTW, I am a former smoker, and quitting was pretty hard. I'd chalk that up to changing my environment (I stopped hanging out with smokers).

[1] http://www.amazon.com/Diagnosing-Changing-Organizational-Cul...
Batteries not required, just plug into ear cells
I think you've outlined just how undervalued managerial skills actually are. I have seen many that have claimed that they can take up a manager's position yet can barely manage relationships with their friends.

I think that relationship skills are key to being a manager, in addition to all the other planning etc.

I'm not sure how approachable your manager is but it sounds like he needs help from you to bring moral up. A leader does not necessarily have to be a manager but of course, with everything, do at your own discretion.
You need plans (however rough) to achieve goals.

It's also quite unlikely that they summarized the entirety of their lives in ~6 sentences. Nuances and changes of plans aren't mentioned. These summaries are in retrospect. The plans are plans, and subject to change.

I think it just so happens that when you look at comfortable people's lives from 30,000 feet, they look similar. "I was young, did a bunch of fun stuff, thought about the future", then "I started a family, or got less risky", then "I know what I want to achieve next".
...and managers are bad because of companies.

A crass generalisation, but no more than the title is.
I've posted several questions to the PostgreSQL mailing list, and I think every time he's written a patient, helpful answer. If I lived in Pittsburgh I'd buy him a beer.
Maintaining Open Source projects is hard, especially if it's not funded by anything but your day job.

You're likely to get a much better response if you make a donation.
Well, Just hours back I attended a campus recruitment drive from a core development company(probably my last chance, in college to get in the industry) and I failed.
I came home depressed of whatabouts of my future, I opened hacker news and all of a sudden, the world seems a bigger place with way more space, than it was a few minutes ago!
That exactly my point, we could easily just start using the word 'phone' to refer to all pocket sized computing devices.

It would be anachronistic.
> average age of 23??? What's with this concept that people in their 40s, 50s or 60s can't be as/more driven than youngsters?

Most of the time I have seen the "we only hire young, hungry people" statement, it translated to: we hire (on paper) qualified people who are still cheap and don't have enough experience to say no to the silliest requests we have. After hiring we just give them enoug work to have their first burn out with 30 and then we hire new people.

Most of the time someone in his 40s to 60s has more experience which means better connections to potential alternative employers and costs more money.

Please see this as a general statement, I don't know if this is the case with this company.
Internet lore: The great GIF debate
While I know nothing about you and your skills, this doesn't have to be always that simple. People who are "the only developer" in a company often get detached from the developer community, living in a kind of technology bubble they created. These people always solve the problems "their way", often obsolete, using inferior tools. They can write tons of code, when there's already a tool which does the trick just a google away. Again, I am not talking with you personally in mind, but simply being the sole programmer doesn't make one indispensable.
It would be really great if Google supported persistant char rooms like IRC. That would make these kinds of bots really usefully.
They are currently prepaying health care benefits for workers who haven't been born yet. It's absurd. Congress went from one extreme to the other.
Are you of the opinion that there is an acceptable level of gaming the system today?
Up for Debate: Can Social Media Solve Real-World Problems?
Animating a Twitter BootStrap Icon with CSS3
> HN is ultimately just a podium for YC companies to market themselves.

That's irrelevant for the question. The question is about the the value of HN regardless of its intended purpose (which is of course open to speculation).

To me, your tone seems a bit derogatory. I don't know if you intend to be that way, but if you were, please don't be. HN surely takes some effort and is hugely valuable to me, and I would rather have those who keep things running feel good about it. Even if it weren't perfectly altruistic, I'd say it's still a win-win for all of us, don't you think?
Could Amazon’s Virtual Currency Buy You a Coffeemaker Someday?
Two Types of Growth
I don't believe it's really campaign to help UPS or Fedex, but mostly a campaign to hurt the half million unionized employees of USPS.

Congressman Issa is a Republican who has sworn jihad against unions. He hates unions with a passion usually reserved for people who run over your dog. So it's not really that he's a corrupt politician trying to get $$$ for his corporate supporters, it's rather that he's a ideologue.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/04/04/darrell-issa-labor-...
But an installer talking to the operating system shouldn't need to separate arguments anywhere.
No worries, it was the first time that happened and if I got $80M in funding, I'd probably want to tell everyone thrice as well ;)
JOSM is right now the most popular editor in OSM. It's desktop software and very powerful. JOSM is very much a power user tool where iD is aiming for a great experience for beginners and casual users.

http://josm.openstreetmap.de/
A better way to write SCSS with Sublime Text 2
I'm the OP - I specifically mention the App Store as a counter example - my article is focused on business and developer oriented software - a completely different audience.
MIT MediaLab: Learning creative learning
I think this is classic monetary policy to stimulate an economy. They're going to greatly expand the money supply. Producers will respond to the assumption that consumers will be flushed with additional currency to expand production to meet that demand. So Amazon is playing Central Bank to its own economy in essence and trying to increase production. In this case that extra production will draw in additional consumers and they can step out having primed the pump initially but hopefully having left a positive cycle.
Microsoft and Huawei aren't exactly equipped to feed people. They are, however, equipped to sell a relatively inexpensive smartphone; putting the sum of human knowledge in peoples hands also has it's own merits. Not to suggest this is some act of pure corporate philanthropy, but it's serving a purpose nonetheless.
Readmill for iPhone
The problem is that ImageMagick was clearly the image handling software of choice for years and years. So you rationally build a solution on it, then you find a bug (often a regression caused by an upgrade), and then there is no support for it. That sucks, and changing to another project that happens to be well-supported this week doesn't really fix the core gripe.
>who would like a "smartphone for the poor people" ?

In America, I see people who get a Blackberry Curve free with their phone contract and are pleased as punch to show off their new "smartphone". One encounter that sticks in my mind was when I almost got hit for saying that a Blackberry wasn't really a smartphone while I was at a party not knowing that a very satisfied and very drunk Blackberry customer was standing beside me, someone who was proud that they could afford a Blackberry Curve and didn't take kindly to anyone attempting to disrupt their self-image.

Yes, customers will buy phones for poor people. The Blackberry Curve is still selling. The iPhone 3GS is still selling. If anyone is being condescending here, it's you and your view that you understand a situation when it's obvious you don't. Phones for poor people doesn't need to have a stigma attached to it. "If they can't afford an iPhone 5, they don't deserve a phone at all" is what I'm getting from your comment. Where's the dignity in that?
Kind of sad that in some versions cheerful is changed to careful.
Plenty of companies have a keystone developer that they don't replace/duplicate.