Jupyter notebooks in the IDE: VS Code vs. PyCharm - <AUTHOR> https://towardsdatascience.com/jupyter-notebooks-in-the-ide-visual-studio-code-versus-pycharm-5e72218eb3e8 <comment><USER3> Anyone else noticed that when editing a notebook in VS Code, one could lose unexecuted edits to a cell with accidental arrow key input (that defocuses the current cell and erases changes)? Too many times I have lost a paragraph worth of Markdown text midst typing, it's kind of maddening.

<comment><USER4> Yep - it's very annoying but for me it only happens with markdown cells? So now I generally select all and copy now before leaving a markdown cell if I've edited it.

The other issue is the language server seems to get into a funk regularly - the completion stops working as does the display of docstrings so I regularly use the "Developer: reload window" feature to reset everything.

Also the plots view is poor - it's basically just an SVG you can magnify - there's no proper zoom or rotation for 3d plots.

I was also irritated by the "smart" environment discovery stuff - just let me specify which python install or vent I want to use. Don't make be google to see what names/locations I have to use in order for an environment to magically appear in the list.

Also the editor extension (I use vi mode) is ignored. And even saving the notebook doesn't work the way every other editor pane works in vscode.

Hmm... writing this list makes me wonder why I haven't looked at alternatives.

<comment><USER5> Disclaimer: I am the engineering manager for the jupyter support supplied in the Python extension.

I LOVE this feedback! Keep it coming (though entering issues [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode- python](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-python) would be ideal)

Yes, as conner4312 VS Code is investigating how to better incorporate a juypter notebook experience within it, natively. As has been pointed out here, there are a number of limitations that the python extension notebook support has run into. We have been working closely with the VS Code team to find solutions to these limitations. The custom editor work ([https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/77131](https://github.com/microsoft/vscode/issues/77131)) is one such mechanism. We plan on rolling out our use of that work soon after it is officially released (sometime in February). However, this will not address all of the problems mentioned in this thread. Those issues will be addressed as native jupyter support arrives in VS Code.

Here's some additional info: \- Find/replace. (Personally, this drove me NUTS! Just ask my team! :) ) That being said a simple find (ctrl-f) is avaiable in the current official release. Unfortunately, it does not include replace. While we recognize that this is a severe limitation for some, implementing a full find and replace solution would end up requiring the extension to duplicate most of the functionality provided by VS Code itself. Therefore, we currently planning to piggy back off of that work when it becomes available. If that winds up taking an inordinate amount of time, we will consider further stop gap work.

\- The markdown loss issue has been addressed and will be in the February release.

\- For the language server problem discussed above, we need more info. I would encourage you to enter a new issue at [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode- python](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-python). In the meantime, there are known related issues that will be fixed the Feb release. One in particular, was caused by the backend jupyter server inexplicably taking a long time to return us a full completion list. So when you don't see completion pop up, it may not be that it's broken, it may just be taking a long time. We are working around this issue for the February release. Also, if you're having docstring issues, you may find that turning off the python jedi language service in settings will help.

\- Plots view. Yes, it is limited and honestly can cause rendering slowdowns. We are working through ways of addressing both problems. A good solution for supporting "proper" zoom will require adding ipywidget support overall, which is coming soon.

\- "Smart environment stuff". I'm not following completely. Is this a general python extension issue or does it have to do with the jupyter kernel selection support we have for notebooks? Again, feel free to enter additional details at: [https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode- python](https://github.com/Microsoft/vscode-python)

\- Supporting global editor extensions like "VI mode", isn't something that we can support without help from VS Code itself. One of the main reason's VS Code is pursuing native notebook support is to be able to handle issues exactly like this.

\- Saving the notebook weirdness will be addressed in the February release. We were waiting for the custom editor support I referred to above to arrive.

Hope this is useful information!

<comment><USER4> Great response - I really appreciate the detail and also commend the tone you use. It makes me a little worried that I came across as too negative earlier.

To balance that: I haven't forgotten the "WOW WHAT IS THIS" feeling I experienced the first time opened an ipynb file from vscode when the notebook support kicked in and asking my colleagues "did you know about this?" as I excitedly started exploring the feature. Since then (and I'm a relative vscode noob), I've never been tempted to go back to working with notebooks through a browser. Despite my gripes, the overall experience is still miles better (in my opinion) than accessing notebooks through a browser. It's the future for sure.

And thanks for all those updates - I can't wait for the Feb release - and it's very reassuring that these issues are not only well recogonized but also are being aggressively addressed.

Regarding some of your feedback to the feedback:

\- Re. the language server issue - it could well be caused by a slow down. I'll test that hypothesis the next time I experience it.

\- The "smart environments stuff" is, as you say, actually a general python extension issue. But actually, I withdraw that complaint. I've just checked and I can point the extension at any python interpreter by editing settings.json - it's just the GUI which restricts you to selecting from a list of discovered interpreters.

Thanks again for your response and your engineering efforts in general.

<comment><USER5> Glad to hear, derriz!

I think environment selection would be considered a bug. I theory any python environment that's on your machine should be selectable in the UI. Could you enter an issue at that same location? I can for you, but I'd prefer that the issue comes directly from an outside user (sometimes we filter bugs based on from where they came).

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm surprised that nobody mentioned that find/replace doesn't work for notebooks in VSCode. It's by far my biggest annoyance.

[https://github.com/microsoft/vscode- python/issues/7903](https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-python/issues/7903)

<comment><USER5> See my reply below.

</comment></comment><comment><USER7> Microsoft have released another IDE with notebook support called Azure Data Studio. It uses the same underlying code base as VS Code but is targeted at data driven tasks such as connecting to databases.

Strangely, it uses a different jupyter notebook implementation to VS Code. I found it avoids some of the annoying bugs mentioned in another comment.

It also introduces a SQL kernel which I've found useful for organising my queries.

<comment><USER8> > SQL kernel

I've never heard this term before and a brief search for it did not bear any definitions.

Can you expand on what exactly makes an SQL kernel?

<comment><USER9> Not GP, but I think they are referring to [https://github.com/jupyter/jupyter/wiki/Jupyter- kernels](https://github.com/jupyter/jupyter/wiki/Jupyter-kernels)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> Needs more mention of emacs and org mode... :)

I am curious to see the general workflow expanded on. I hesitate to think there is a single correct way to keep a notebook. Seems flexibility is the key feature. And is why text is so well used.

<comment><USER11> I haven't even gotten into org mode, I just edit Python using emacs and it works great. I can evaluate parts of the code and jump to the interpreter when needed. I keep a matplotlib window open with plt.ion() when running locally, or use plt.savefig() when running remotely and have a qiv window open that automatically detects new images. Works great.

The only thing I would like is to be able to use the Python interpreter _within_ the context of a function sometimes, it's annoying when an error occurs inside a function and I can't access the local variables.

I like jupyter notebooks too, but one of the things stopping me is that I can't use emacs features for editing ;)

<comment><USER12> To interactively inspect within a function, you could use the debugger with `breakpoint()`. But it's not a regular Python interpreter, which annoys me having to learn the different syntax. You can also embed IPython interactively with:

        import IPython; IPython.embed()

though IPython kinda doesn't clean up after itself, so it's a bit messier (your prompt is messed up afterwards).

Finally, you can:

        import code; code.interact()

The downside of this is there's no history or autocomplete by default.

I have a custom function `embed()` [1] that calls `code.interact()`, but with history and autocomplete configured. This is the closest I got it to looking like a regular Python interpreter at an arbitrary place in the code.

[1] [https://pastebin.com/WDuheBfV](https://pastebin.com/WDuheBfV)

<comment><USER11> Thank you! I didn't know about code.interact, but IPython.embed I have used in the past. My point was more that I would like a way to drop to an IPython prompt when my program crashes, I really don't like the solution of having to modify the code to insert a statement where I _think_ my program is _going_ to crash.

In any case I think there was a way to examine variables from up the stack of a stack trace or something like that.. bit too lazy to look it up right now. Regardless, working with a REPL in emacs is pretty great ;)

I think there is a way to do jupyter from emacs (or at least there was a way to do ipython notebooks), but I haven't used it extensively, just tested it once I think. I guess I'm pretty satisfied with the REPL and haven't found a need to have intermediate output during the running of a program.

What I do like about the matpotlib interactive approach is being able to watch the progress of a loop very easily, which is hard to do from a notebook, although there are some ways, but they are either hacky or require some pretty sophisticated things like custom widgets.

<comment><USER12> Yeah I considered extending it to automatically pop into the frame where the exception happened, but this is actually not as useful as it sounds, since the exception is usually much deeper in some other library and not in your code where you actually want to inspect variables. You would either need to declare the boundary between 'your' code and other code (by filepath or something), so the tool could know where it should run, or you would need to include commands to push and pop through the stack, which complicates things a bit and is on the path to a full debugger (so perhaps one should just use the debugger - <USER2> you've mentioned in the sibling comment).

So I just add a try: except around code known to be crashing and call my `embed()` function on except. This has served me well enough that I haven't bothered with anything else.

Plus, if I really want to inspect unplanned crashes, I would want to be able to get them when running, and not just developing, the app. So there might not even be a terminal - there are more complications than just 'not having to declare where you think it will crash', so I don't think I'll bother solving the more specific problem unless it would help me debug unexpected crashes in a broader context.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> Why are you using a notebook _and_ an IDE? I thought the notebook UI was an alternative to the IDE UI.

<comment><USER14> Frankly I HATE web based notebooks. I do deep learning research, and I write a lot of complex functions to handle pre-processing. And with that there's a lot of debugging I need to do, particularly visual debugging of images. The interactivity of notebooks and the features of an IDE has made my programming experience much better.

<comment><USER15> I'm curious, what interactivity do you enjoy about notebooks that you find missing in IDEs? I find my situation to be quite the opposite. I love developing/writing code in Pycharm because apart from all the things it excels at (introspection, auto complete, linting, documentation, debugging, etc), it lets me easily prototype things in the interactive python interpreter (usually set to IPython), has an excellent variable viewer and even allows you to attach a debugger to your python interpreter and debug things on-the-fly.

I find myself able to prototype code a lot faster in that setting compared to a Notebook. Even with plots, plotting in Pycharm provides me an interactive plot I can zoom around in, which is not the default behavior in Jupyter. The only situations where I ever use a Notebook is when I need to share a Python "document" that isn't just a python script + results, but rather some form of extensive self-documenting code that could benefit from Markdown integration and co-location of output plots, etc. The other situation is some of their built in animation/interactive widgets (perhaps that is the interactivity you are referring to?). In most other cases, I've found it quite limiting compared to a good IDE like Pycharm/Code.

That being said, I think the efforts on Pycharm and Vscode's part to bridge this gap is commendable and quite interesting.

<comment><USER16> Microsoft Visual Studio level of Edit and Continue has never been well implemented in open source tooling (with the exception of certain Common Lisp implementations that predate even visual studio, I suspect Turbo Pascal might have this feature too but I have never really used it). This is why most people have to resort to hacks like notebooks and repls with bad UX that spend most of the time spewing errors at the user. It is starting to come back with Flutter, React, and all the livereload stuff but you need a ton of work to get it to work on Python.

See:

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16289856](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16289856)

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21646240](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21646240)

<comment><USER17> Turbo Pascal never had it, which barely mattered as it was already damm fast on a 4 Mhz MS-DOS PC.

Not sure about Delphi though.

However, I would also point to Java, Smalltalk, Eiffel as another set of examples.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Spyder has a Jupyter notebook plugin. I was able to get a notebook going and link the kernel to the IDE. The variable editor worked and I could debug code in Spyder and then paste it into the notebook. The notebook piece of it was good for graphics, widgets, markdown, etc.

<comment><USER19> Is spyder still super slow? I gave it up back in 2018 because of the (perceived) performance problems.

<comment><USER18> Hard to say as I am not a power-user/coder by any standard least of all those of this forum. I've tried Python on and off over the years and the Spyder 3.x/Jupyter combo was the closest I could get to the kind of UI that Matlab offers: Variable inspector, debugger, persistent/docked plots, documentation, recordkeeping, etc. It wasn't clear whether the Spyder/Jupyter plugin was going to be maintained in future Spyder releases and the combo, although close, was not as smooth as I would have liked.

Ultimately, Matlab is a better fit for the things I want to do in technical computing. My employer offers it and Simulink with a wide variety of toolboxes and blocksets so I can get farther faster for the problems that interest me or that I am asked to solve. The new table datatype and the steadily improving Livescript make exploration and notetaking very easy. I've also been able to rely on Mathworks documentation to get up-to-speed in new areas.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><AUTHOR> Also available at [https://github.com/mwouts/notebooks_in_vscode_and_pycharm_ja...](https://github.com/mwouts/notebooks_in_vscode_and_pycharm_jan_2020)

</comment><comment><USER20> I'm trying to implement these same features in my app, Repla, but without requiring an editor plugin, and instead having a view in a separate app that automatically updates via file-system events when you save. There's some more information here [https://repla.app/live-coding.html](https://repla.app/live- coding.html)

It's an approach that I think has somes pros and cons relative to integrating these features into an IDE. The main argument for moving them to a separate app, is that IDEs are already really complicated.

<comment><USER21> I'm not on macOS, so I can't try it right now, but I've bookmarked this and will keep an eye on it. Basically the report/output view of Iodide/Jupyter without the "editor" view? I was really hoping something like this would come along.

<comment><USER20> Yes, that's exactly right. Great to hear other people are also interested in this approach! The technology I developed has ended up being pretty flexible, you can read about it here ([https://blog.repla.app/2020/01/13/what-is- repla/](https://blog.repla.app/2020/01/13/what-is-repla/)) and here ([https://blog.repla.app/2020/01/13/repla-use- cases/](https://blog.repla.app/2020/01/13/repla-use-cases/)) if you're curious. But yeah, that's exactly the use case I developed the technology for. I wanted a browser engine with a plugin system so that I could use to display output of systems like Jupyter and Observable HQ, while still editing the source code in my exiting text editor, the same way I edit other source code. I sort of discovered along the way that this system is also a nice way to run a local development web server, and that was a bit easier to implement, so that's what I've launched with first, the homepage has more info on that ([https://repla.app/](https://repla.app/)).

I'd like to support Linux and Windows eventually too, but it's easier to start with supporting just one platform while I'm just testing out whether there's other people interested in the idea.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER22> I see this, and I cannot help but think, hey, one step closer to achieving the plain-text goodness magic of the R Notebook. But maybe I'm being too sassy. Its just that every time I pick up Jupyter I think, what is this clumsy thing? I know people love it, but that's how I feel. I wish pycharm had the in-line capabilities of the R Notebook, because I really like pycharm.

</comment><comment><USER23> KDE's Cantor isn't too bad either, but I am not sure how well it interoperates with Jupyter notebooks.

<comment><USER24> Overall its pretty good but some known issues. See: [https://sirgienkogsoc2019.blogspot.com/2019/08/cantor-and- su...](https://sirgienkogsoc2019.blogspot.com/2019/08/cantor-and-support-for- jupyter.html)

</comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't do data science and I really don't understand what Jupyter notebooks are used for. Are they just a way to explore ideas with immediate feedback?

<comment><USER26> You can publish them on github or mybinder as persistent self documenting interactive repl sessions. Then others can see what the code did, the intermediate results, and can easily play with it.

(No "data science" here either, but into repl based instant feedback development & collaboratiove programming tools)

<comment><USER25> Oh, very cool. Sounds like something I'd love to use. I always loved the Clojure REPL.

<comment><USER27> Notebooks also inline visualizations more naturally than the repl, which makes them really nice for the data analysis workflow.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> This misses a pretty stellar entrant in the field, Atom + Hydrogen. Works nicely with multiple kernels (I use R and Python), allowing notebook-like functionality across multiple languages.

<comment><USER29> What do you mean misses? The author mentions that exact combination in paragraph 4.

<comment><USER28> You're right, I missed that, thanks for pointing it out. I wish it had ranked high enough for a comparison though, seems to solve some of the issues raised (though perhaps causes others).

<comment><USER30> I strongly second the use of Atom + Hydrogen.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER31> I can't help thinking that notebooks would be less relevant if people embraced unit testing more

<comment><USER32> I don't think they are very related, aside from both being useful.

I use primarily for doing stepwise development. I also use them for a decent way to see the output of my code, usually tables and charts.

I have unit tests for the various modules and classes created.</comment></comment>


I Taught My Computer to Write Its Own Music (2015) - <AUTHOR> http://nautil.us/issue/79/catalysts/how-i-taught-my-computer-to-write-its-own-music-rprd <comment><USER2> Discussed at the time: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14909929](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14909929)

A bit more: [https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17239367](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17239367)

</comment><comment><USER3> You just made your own music in a very convoluted way. Some might argue that its not even music, but thats a road I would tread.

Music is one of the few things that is truly human. The emotional, and not just tonal content, is what makes music not just pleasant or interesting noise. The constant drive to have computers make music is almost as old as computers themselves, and the constant striving to make them as good as people at anything.

<comment><USER4> Every time I've raised this, you get whacked by the AI crowd: "if the listeners can't tell the different between music composed by computer and composed by a human, what does it matter".

Even if a neural network can learn to simulate timbre, tone and emotion from listening to the masters, it doesn't _feel_ anything while doing so. And that's what makes it uninteresting to me (other than on a purely technical level).

<comment><USER5> So if you listen to something and you have no idea how it was produced, you have no idea whether it's interesting or not?

<comment><USER4> I might the music interesting, sure. Then when you find out how it was created, you can discard any apparent or perceived emotional aspect of it if it wasn't created by a human, since you know it's just a simulation.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Reaffirming the White House's Commitment to Net Neutrality - <AUTHOR> https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/reaffirming-white-houses-commitment-net-neutrality

<comment><USER2> So it says "President Obama agrees net neutrality is important, but the FCC is an independent agency so the White House won't tell them what to do."

Honestly, that's not much, but it is still slightly better than I had hoped. Even if it doesn't involve any immediate action, it clearly acknowledges the problem and even takes a position.</comment>


Y Combinator Bets on Biotech - <AUTHOR> http://www.nature.com/news/start-up-investor-bets-on-biotech-1.15096 <comment><USER2> Great! This is why I went back to school to get my biochem degree. I was a data scientist working with hadoop + mahout at a startup and I said "this is going to revolutionize medicine." When I get my masters in biomedical engineering in a few years I have a dream to help found a company that applies big data and machine learning to problems with clinical significance. Elizabeth, you may end up hearing from me :P

<comment><USER3> Look for something beyond target identification, if you can. That is lowest part of the value chain.

<comment><USER2> Not sure what you mean by targets, are you talking about enzymes and drug discovery?

<comment><USER3> Typically I would be referring to the protein (or other molecule) that you want to target with a drug, to either reduce or promote its action.

As wiki puts it:

[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_discovery#Drug_targets](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drug_discovery#Drug_targets)

Generally, the "target" is the naturally existing cellular or molecular structure involved in the pathology of interest that the drug-in-development is meant to act on.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER4> _" The thing I never understood is: shouldn't the biotech community be happy that more people are trying to do this and that more people are funding this work?"_

It's a world where lots of great ideas are underfunded (or not at all), because the traditional government sources don't have the money needed to invest in every good idea. Also, it's still generally too expensive to chase every possible business idea in biotech, and there are plenty of ideas with academic promise that don't get anywhere because the traditional sources of investment are too conservative. Scientists get punchy when they see funding going to "unproven" entrepreneurs, while they're slaving away at research that is peer-reviewed, but isn't getting any investor attention.

It's good to see YC bringing in outside expertise for this area, because the likely outcome for amateur angel investment in biotech would be investing in lots of flashy-but-insubstantial entrepreneurs, while legitimate research never gets off the bench. In my experience, it's much harder to evaluate biotech ideas than software.

<comment><USER5> A funny part of the history of biology: NASA established its Life Sciences office in 1960, and the following decades they funded some pretty influential research in molecular biology and on the origin of life, which was not getting funding from more conventional biology funding sources.

Maybe the highlights would be Lynn Margulis and the endosymbiosis theory, and Carl Woese finding the Archaea in 1977.

References:

JE Strick. 2004. Creating a Cosmic Discipline: The Crystallization and Consolidation of Exobiology, 1957-1973. Journal of the History of Biology 37:131-180.

[http://www.researchgate.net/profile/James_Strick/publication...](http://www.researchgate.net/profile/James_Strick/publication/225266412_Creating_a_Cosmic_Discipline_The_Crystallization_and_Consolidation_of_Exobiology_19571973/file/32bfe50f022c9d3a59.pdf)

M Morange. 2007. What history tells us X. Fifty years ago: the beginning of exobiology. Journal of Biosciences 32(6): 1083-1087.

<comment><USER6> It's unfortunate that so much of what NASA funds and calls exobiology is such crap these days.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> The issue isn't so much YC's investment in projects that may not have scientific rigor, but that of individual investors via crowd-funding platforms. At an extreme, this results in a company like GoBe raising $1.1 million on IndieGogo with PR and a slick video.

YCombinator has the sophistication and time to vet their investments. If they want to back something most of the scientific community thinks won't work, all the best to them. However, raising capital from mom-and-pop investors is another story.

</comment><comment><USER8> This is a wise move.

Let me suggest the mitochondrion as the main target to explore:

\- In a very simple but accurate analogy, a computer will not work properly - if at all - if the power is not coming. You can have the best hardware; you can put endless hours to develop the best possible software, but nothing matters if the power is not coming. \- Mitochondria produce 90% of the energy - ATP - we need to function. \- Mitochondria are a relatively simple structures. Its DNA is way smaller and simpler than the nuclear - double helix - DNA. \- Many health issues seems to be the result of a primary mitochondrial dysfunction, or \- Many health issues will result in a secondary mitochondrial dysfunction.

I do have a mutation in my mtDNA (mitochondrial DNA), so

\- I know what I am talking about and \- Yes, I am very biased; my life depends on this.

<comment><USER9> Mitochondrial diseases don't seem like an easy target because they are really metabolic and homeostatic disorders, which are very complex. If the main failure of mitochondrial disorders were a lack of energy production, how could cancer cells grow faster than regular cells, yet turn off mitochondrial energy production in favor of anaerobic glycolysis and lactic acid fermentation (which is much less efficient)? Mitochondria have an under appreciated role in ion homeostasis, intermediary metabolism, and biosynthesis that seems to be the cause of many mitochondrial diseases. The mitochondrial genome only codes for a few proteins, but relies heavily on the nuclear genome for proteins. In other words, the mitochondria isn't just an isolated power plant; it's an integrated system that provides power in addition to logic, material processing, signaling, etc. Sorry to hear about your disorder, fortunately there are people researching these diseases.

<comment><USER8> Well said, I thought HN were only for geeks, but you clearly have a solid biology background.

I agree that faulty mitochondria will break homeostasis and from this point on, the problem is unsolvable.

But homeostasis will break because:

1\. Plain vanilla energy deficit. Not enough energy. Babies die within the first days after birth. or 2\. Inefficient - but normal - energy production. This will produce an excess of free radicals, "emitting" all kinds of weird signals to the rest of the cell/tissue/body. Most of mitochondrial diseases and diseases that cause a secondary mitochondrial dysfunction fall in this category. "The threshold effect" \- mutant mitochondria outnumber healthy mitochondria as you grow older - will eventually take you to point 1.

Given this, repairing the mitochondria will bring homeostasis back. Currently, there are 3 lines of thought: 1\. Repair the faulty mitochondria 2\. Allotopic expression (literally, make backup copies of mitochondria DNA in the nuclear DNA and let them "express" from here instead of from mtDNA) 3\. Kill faulty mitochondria. Given that mitochondria go through a fusion/fission cycles every few days, killing faulty mitochondria will restore a healthy mitochondria population in a very short period. The underlying genetic defect is still there, but it causes no harm at all.

I am for 3.; much simpler both technically and legally. The latest in this regards is [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/emmm.201303672/ab...](http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/emmm.201303672/abstract)

Thanks for your concert. I didn´t want to be tragic in my original post. My life depends on my mitochondria, but I am doing relatively well considering my disease.

For the curious, I have CPEO + myopathy, common mtDNA deletion, 35% mutation load.

<comment><USER9> I think emerging research in genome engineering and sculpting evolutionary fitness using genome engineering tools will probably solve these disorders. However, these technologies have--in my opinion--lower hanging and more profitable fruit in other biomedical interventions, such as cancer therapy. They will probably cure mitochondrial disorders as a side-effect, though, and possibly by small start-ups (since there's such little money in these rare, one-shot-cure diseases).

I'm a Ph.D. candidate in systems biology.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> The SENS Research Foundation has a network of supporters among portions of the VC crowd in the Bay Area. Some of the halo of attached or associated young researchers there should explore putting one of their lines of research more likely to get somewhere interesting soon into YC, see what happens.

A completely baked form of allotopic expression or toolkits for glucosepane breakdown in tissues could both produce viable and highly useful technology platforms prior to being far enough along to be applied to the reversal of aspects of aging. Neither of those seems too far away to be non-viable for this sort of timescale, and meaningful biotech projects are very cheap these days if you have access to a provisioned lab.

<comment><USER11> When are you submitting a proposal ? Ping me if you want to talk more about what a project in this space would look like.

<comment><USER8> Take a look here [http://www.longecity.org/forum/page/index.html/_/feature/res...](http://www.longecity.org/forum/page/index.html/_/feature/res2013)

We (longecity members) founded this project out of our pockets a few months ago. I am sure Dr. Matthew 'Oki' O'Connor will love to discuss ideas with you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> One of the side effects of 120k vs 20k opening the model to different sectors/needs at the earliest stages. What will be interesting to see is the developments in expertise and what different requirements there are for managing and mentoring entreprenuers in these different areas. Would be great to hear some thoughts on that, if not immediately perhaps in a years time or so.

</comment><comment><USER13> Biotech start-ups are very different to most other technology start-ups. I am not sure the ecosystem that YC has is really adaptable to "wet" biotech. I certainly hope I am wrong as biotech could definitely do with new thinking and approaches to funding.

<comment><USER14> A lot of biotech isn't "wet" these days. I work in a sequencing centre. More than half of the employees seem to be computer based.

<comment><USER13> DNA sequencing software is what my company develops (if you still have any ABI machines it might be of interest). If your centre is like my customers the computer based people still need the wet lab people to generate the data.

<comment><USER14> All Illumina here. Yes, of course we have wet lab people, but excluding admin staff, I think the wet lab staff make up less than half of the workforce.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> SV VCs getting burned in cleantech was apparently not lesson enough?

"One of the key misplaced assumptions that Valley VCs made in cleantech boom times is that the rapid progress of Moore's Law could be created for cleantech with a little bit of VC funding and Valley smarts."

s/clean/bio/g

[http://gigaom.com/2012/02/01/we-can-thank-moores-law-for- the...](http://gigaom.com/2012/02/01/we-can-thank-moores-law-for-the-vc- cleantech-bust/)

</comment><comment><USER16> I find the timing of this and the "New Deal" press releases a bit confusing -- is YC starting to take biotech companies _now_ (like YC S14) or in the next batch?

I'm assuming the New Deal terms are for S14, but was also surprised to see the announcement after the applications were all in.

Can anyone clarify / point me to what I've missed?

<comment><USER17> Mm, I'd also be interested in finding out. The Request for Startups [[http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html](http://ycombinator.com/rfs.html)] doesn't mention anything, but then again they don't look like they've been updated in some time.

I'd be interested in seeing some guidance for nascent biotech companies wanting to apply, given the focus has been on software for so long.

<comment><USER18> BioTech is a subcategory of FRS10.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> Is $120k going to be enough to even make a dent in a biotech startup?! It's years and years and years of hard work before you may even get denied by the FDA. With all this funny money flying around who has the patience to wait 10 years to maybe see a return?!

<comment><USER20> There is a need for biotech startups that help navigate FDA regulations. Think process & documentation for medical solutions, like shovels for gold-miners.

I've been doing consulting work at healthcare manufacturers. The environment is insane -- constraining, slow, unproductive, depressing. And it's _used_ as a huge moat.

<comment><USER20> Down-voting my comment will not make the FDA regulations go away. You will not bring any biotech products to [edit: medical] market unless you comply with the FDA (or somehow manage to eradicate it).

Health-related products and services are heavily controlled -- in ways completely at odds with the common practices of Internet startups. If you haven't yet had to comply with these regulations, you may want to find out how onerous they are.

Here is one example: Quality System (QS) Regulation/Medical Device Good Manufacturing Practices [1], covering: Quality System, Design Controls, and Human Factors.

They _audit_ your compliance with their regulations. You have to document everything you do, every decision you make, every change you make. That is not how startups commonly operate.

[1] [http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidanc...](http://www.fda.gov/MedicalDevices/DeviceRegulationandGuidance/PostmarketRequirements/QualitySystemsRegulations/)

<comment><USER21> Who say's biotech products have to go via the FDA? There are all kinds of potential markets with lower or non-existent barriers to market, eg my company which makes Glowing Plants. These are the areas which make more sense initially as you really can take a lean startup approach to them.

<comment><USER22> how's that going? You guys said you would deliver in april, but it looks like it's been pushed back to june. There are also very few lab-related blog posts, despite a promise by Mr. Drory in the reddit thread that all intermediate results, both good and bad would be disclosed. Also, he said a budget would be disclosed. I haven't seen one on the site yet.

[http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1e5rti/whats_wro...](http://www.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/1e5rti/whats_wrong_with_the_glowing_plant_kickstarter/)

>This will be totally transparent project - we will introduce a novel concept called "constant peer review" \- In academia no one publish things that didn't work - we will publish everything.

>We take being a good Steward of our backers funds as #1 priority. Our budget will also be publish online and you can see where the money went.

Neither of these two things has happened yet.

<comment><USER21> Are you a backer? We've been sharing this information in the backer updates. Some of this is also to be found on our youtube channel.

With respect to the budget we currently have $230,000 left in the bank. We'll publish the financials when we are ready to ship.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER23> Interesting move. I've often heard people complain that the best minds are writing HTML/Javascript when they should be solving real problems (e.g. medicine/health)... obviously because Tech pays big money. I'm not undermining the utility of FB & Whatsapp but I feel a larger percentage of the World population needs better healthcare & medicine. I'd be happy to see the balance of crazy paying startups shift towards life sciences. What could be a better incentive to innovate than this. Have a BS/MS/PhD? Good, go hack the body & decode it. 'x' years from now, there'll be open plugins to debug & fine tune your body.

<comment><USER24> There are also great ("best") minds solving real problems in medicine/health.

They are just a trillion times harder/expensive than writing an app.

<comment><USER23> The barrier to entry for writing an app has been lowered because of money+innovation in tech. Hoping for same in medicine. Human simulators would make it so easy to test medicines.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't think investing should be dumbed down to betting. The public already has high aversion towards "throwing $120K at [random] companies". YC (and with them a lot of accelerators/investors) analyze their prospects.

Sure, sometimes there is a chance and an underbelly-feeling involved in whether a startup should be invested in, but to degrade investments as "betting" is probably the highest insult an investment/accelerator-firm can get.

<comment><USER26> What should they do instead? Make a hedge fund with the money? Yeah, that worked out well..

<comment><USER27> The parent's suggestion is that to refer to a YC investment as a "bet" is a little bit of a misnomer. It's a targeted, reasoned investment, not "120K on 'Little Devil' to win."

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> Science has become sclurotic. Teams that are funded outside of state science system are going to be able to take risks and try things that would be unthinkable in academia. Each of these teams in an experiment in a different way to do experiments. All of science will benefit from the results of these meta-experiments.

<comment><USER27> My experiences with industry research to date do not particularly back that up. For every "academia is too conservative", there's a pushback of "Yeah, but will this be profitable?"

<comment><USER22> False dichotomy, there are avenues of research that are outside of the traditional academy (and the 'new tradition' of state-funded science) and outside of industry. For example, Janelia Farms, run by HHMI. As I alluded to above, historically, Peter D. Mitchell's work (which garnered him a nobel prize), as well.

The story of how state-run science funding is broken is exemplified by the story of Douglas Prasher.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Prasher](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Douglas_Prasher)

<comment><USER6> I wouldn't describe Janelia Farms as outside the traditional academy. It's just a foundation with great facilities and an extremely high bar to entry, but a low bar for continued funding.

<comment><USER27> Especially as many HHMI scientists, both within and outside Janelia had very strong careers within "traditional academy" first.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Great news, especially after the "biotech is dead" chants from Wall St. for the last couple of weeks. I hope to see some posts like "XYZ Company (YC ##) hiring bioinformatics developer" sometime soon!

</comment><comment><USER29> "some worry that Silicon Valley's penchant for technology and marketing might not be compatible with medical research"

I would say that a good portion of medical research IS technology and marketing, for better or worse.

<comment><USER26> Actually the "might not be compatible with medical research" is the great part about it. Life sciences research often tends to be short-sighted, plagued by the egos of scientists, the politics of scientific publishing and the fight for government funding. I hope YC chooses the "incompatible" route.

</comment></comment><comment><USER30> Responding to criticism of the Immunity Project's lack of peer review:

"If the traditional science community wants to say these things aren't going to work, they can keep doing that. That's what used to happen with software companies. The Immunity Project may fail, and the next 30 things we fund may fail — and the whole model is such that that's OK. We can have 31 failures and one success, and the model still works great. That's how we're designed."

<comment><USER18> I was more struck by this part:

> How many Nature papers are not reproducible? To call out a new bunch of > people who are trying something different because people are afraid they'll > fail is sort of hypocritical given that we don't really check whether > anybody else's results are correct, either.

Peer review is more about politics then reproducibility. Reproducibility is really important, but Nature doesn't seem to agree.

<comment><USER14> I have a theory with peer review, if it works, it is important and it is reproducible, then people _will_ reproduce it and build on it. If any of the three parts are not there, then no one will want / need / be able to reproduce it, and it will fade into scientific obscurity, while the rest of the scientific community keep moving forwards.

<comment><USER31> Or people spend a lot of time and money trying to chase down something that a ground "found" and published. It's very common to read a paper, think it sounds good, then try build on it only to find that you can't.

Peer review is completely flawed. Until it's made more transparent, like at F1000, it's going to continue that way.

Not being a negative Nancy here, but I've been on both sides of the fence (reviewed and had grants/papers reviewed) and it isn't an efficient system. Much like many other things in science, it's an antiquated process that needs to be overhauled to get back to it's "roots".

<comment><USER14> Peer review is not perfect, but its still better than the way the mainstream media reports the news.

<comment><USER31> That is 100% true, but that isn't a fair comparison.

Peer review should be open, scientists shouldn't be allowed to choose who reviews/doesn't review their papers, and the process by which selection is done needs to be more rigorous.

My suggestion, open it up to everyone in the field and make sure that the reviewers are identified. Anonymous peer review has the same effect that anonymous posting on internet forums has, people become e-thugs or just say things that they shouldn't ever say because they know the reader doesn't know who they are.

This sounds like it doesn't happen, but you would be surprised that the stuff that happens behind closed doors. Scientists are people, people are flawed (which is fine), but that shouldn't hold back scientific discoveries.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


We do get out of bed for less than $10,000 dollars per day - <AUTHOR> http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/We+do+get+out+of+bed+for+less+than+10000+dollars+per+day <comment><USER2> He read it too literally. The point is not 10k or any magic number. The point is "don't be desperate for money". The point is to view yourself as something valuable. If you have no value for yourself, you'll be happy to get a low pay in exchange for a low-quality service. The more respect you have for yourself, the more people will respect you and the more valuable you become.

His counter argument is basically like this (he's B):

A: Doing X pays, just look at K (where K is a person)

B: No, you can't do X, and don't look at K, he's a special case.

A: Duh, he's special because he does X; he wasn't born special.

Someone should coin a name for this kind of argument ..

As JM himself notes, Linda Evangelista is not that special when it comes to prettiness or friendliness. He should've paused for a second to ponder how she became a brand.

(For the record, I have no clue who this Linda girls is).

Consider Steve Jobs. He says[1] he does not ship garbage. Why is that? Is it because he's rich and he can afford it? No, it's because this is who he is. He wasn't born rich; he got where he is because he could never ever produce garbage. A simple way to prove this is to consider: if he had shipped garbage through out his career, why would he stop now? Just look at Oracle and Microsoft.

[1] <http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yu0qeb_rJYU>

<comment><USER3> Steve Jobs mixes garbage, the AppleTV/MobileMe, with things that look pretty but are garbage under the hood, iMac, with things that aren't garbage, iPhone.

The beauty is that Jobs has created an aura where everything looks like gold.

<comment><USER4> This place is turning as bad as reddit. You can't even discuss technology without some fanboy frothing from his mouth.

<comment><USER3> I agree, and you get metacomments that add absolutely no value to the conversation. And you get upvoted for adding no value, but downvoted for noting it. Gotta love the HN Apple fans.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I generally love JM's postings, but it's clear that he did not actually read much of the article at all. Unfortunately that cheapens the discussion.

For what it's worth, I think that Sebastien's reasoning for not having advertising on his site should be summarized, screen printed and dropped propaganda style from airplanes over the financial districts of the world so that when bored fund guys hire us to build web properties, they might be slightly more likely to have a non-advertising business model in mind.

<comment><USER6> What Sebastian is advocating is a method of hard bargaining that may or may not lead to brand building. What Jacques is advocating is being careful about not crossing the line between bargaining and delusions about your own market worth. It's a perilous balance to maintain if you're playing this game and falling either way might ruin you.

<comment><USER7> Actually, he's not advocating bargaining of any firmness. He's saying that one's personal brand (or dignity, or whatever) should have a minimum price that is not necessarily $0.01. In his case, he's decided that the amount he'd earn with advertising isn't worth the cheapening of his brand it would entail.

It's shocking to me how many people commenting here (plus Jacques) totally misunderstood Sebastian's post.

<comment><USER6> It depends on how you read it I guess.

This debate I think is based on a perception bias and the failure of language to communicate something like that.

I see something. Jacques sees something else. Sebastian sees another paradigm entirely and you see some portion of sebastian's paradigm.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER8> I think JM missed the point of Sebastien's use of the quote. From the original article:

 _"But like my freelancer friend wrote, or like Ms. Evangelista says – if you've got the chops, you set your own rates to a large extent. I'm not looking to pick up $80 per month at the expense of other things. More on this in a minute."_

JM's entire post focuses on his use of the Linda Evangelista quote to illustrate a point about not cheapening your "product" or your "brand" unless it's really worth it. Maybe he didn't read the whole thing.

Sebastien's articles give me the shits and I think talk about winning, success, victory and individualism is counter productive but if you're going to criticise it at least get your facts straight.

<comment><USER9> Why is it counter productive? Because it makes us losers feel like losers? Or because it == resting on laurels?

<comment><USER10> Because the CEO of BigCo isn't likely to award you a big contract if he gave you two dollars for coffee not five minutes ago. Picking up (advertising) pennies is not without costs.

<comment><USER7> Can you elaborate upon how that answers crasshopper's question? What you're saying seems like a non sequitur.

<comment><USER10> You're right, I misread. Sorry; a shame it's too late to edit/delete now...

<comment><USER9> Your answer made sense. Tim Harford did a piece on why people who refuse to be team players (e.g. take on some extra work that's "beneath" them) end up making more money. I assume you mean a signalling scenario like that.

<comment><USER10> Yes, exactly.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER11> I'll gladly take those 2k Eur to provide a day of reading comprehension classes that would help avoid such misunderstandings. :) \

Sebastien's article had little to do with actual money and a lot to do with the implicit value of one's skills, name, and work (and advises not to cheapen your brand with puny advertisements unless it actually makes sense financially). This response had nothing whatsoever to do with anything but the link bait title.

</comment><comment><USER12> Is it just me, or is Jacques still reading and replying to articles that reach the HN homepage?

Did Jacques replace commenting on HN with writing blog posts?

<comment><USER13> Commenting with a blog post instead of in the comments seems to be a new trend around here.

<comment><USER14> Actually, it's encouraged in the etiquette and advice pages of HN.

<comment><USER13> I never said there was anything wrong with it. I just said it was a new trend.

<comment><USER14> I never said you said. I just think it's amusing that following the advice is now a new trend.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER15> You miss the point of the article. "Don't be desperate for money" is the main point of the article.

And for me, I don't think it's appropriate to mention that I earn 2,000 Euros / day.

</comment><comment><USER16> If you ignore the references to Sebastian in JM's post and pay attention only to the subject, it is clear that they're talking about different things.

</comment><comment><USER17> Wonder what you get from him for 2k eur per day

<comment><USER6> Your money's worth.

Seriously, this guy has implemented so many systems and has written so many lines of code that I've lost count. Plus he has awesome business experience ( [http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/content/story-behind-wwcom- ca...](http://www.jacquesmattheij.com/content/story-behind-wwcom-camaradescom) ) and is a pretty great guy to work with. Yet again, the thing is that what he brings to the table isn't just pure coding skills, or business skills, but a combination of both and years of experience. So, what you're actually doing by hiring him for a day is hiring an army of programmers for all the human years he has invested.

You know the thing is that when you have been in the market for that long and people are willing to pay you that much for that long. There has to be a lot under the surface.

<comment><USER17> That didn't answer my question ;-)

Maybe seeing what he's done for other ppl for 2k eur a day would be a good indication.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER18> For someone who usually writes very smart posts this is one strange post.

On one hand developers complain that they don't get paid enough and don't get treated well. On the other hand, they refuse to consider the possibility that perhaps not getting out of bed for less than $10,000 a day is exactly what developers ought to do.

If you look at the cumulative worth companies like Microsoft and Google and VMWare built up and break it down to the founders and first 10 developers - it'd be a lot more than $10,000 per day.

</comment><comment><USER19> The $10,000 per day was just a metaphor to not actually do things that you feel you don't deserve. Of course a lot of it has to fall in place before you are _there_ to do that.

I mean for a man with no job and loads of skills he still needs to work for a while before he is able to claim that.

Also a good idea might be to have a constant fallback of some form. A safer job that gives enough time for freelance maybe?

</comment><comment><USER20> _Linda Evangelista is a brand unto herself. That's why she's worth the big bucks, not because she's a good looking girl (I know prettier ones!) and not because she's that great to work with. It's simply because she moves product. Most of us provide a service, we are not 'brands'._

I actually see no difference. If I'm offering a service, then I need to brand myself. This is no different than products we sell, or buy. The Author, jacquesmattheij, himself has a brand. He should be popular in his field, so that he can touch 2K euro / day.

He has got skills in IT. Linda has got skills in promoting products. It's not her beauty what makes a difference. He actually mentioned that, though. So, she's not 'that girl'. She's someone that made it and become able to sell products. She has got her own marketing strategies and that works.

She has got skills, same for the Author. They are just approaching different fields.

</comment><comment><USER21> Is he trying to being ironic by saying his fee is 2k? Its pretty much the same as Eva Evangelista's gambit.

</comment><comment><USER22> I should stay in bed with my 3,5k a month it seems

It's a good income for 24 year olds in Belgium, though. Most everyone I graduated with has 2k/month. I wouldn't know what to do with 2k a day like JM.

<comment><USER23> I make 55000 USD per year, but live in a cheap place where 8500 USD per year is considered a good salary.

It is all relative.

<comment><USER9> You consider 55000 USD per year low? Geez, I've never made over 20000 USD.

40000 is the median in the U.S. and that includes people at the peak of their careers. Cops, teachers, and social workers don't necessarily make much above that after a lifetime of hard work. Anyone over 40000 should feel proud and/or fortunate.

<comment><USER23> In the U.S. it is not uncommon for software developers working as employees to make between 90k and 120k per year. In fact, AFAIK that's THE salary for experienced devs in Silicon Valley; and independent contractors can make much more than that.

Indeed cops, teachers, and social workers make much less, but salary is usually a function of how much profit you can produce + a function of supply and demand.

The demand right now for capable software engineers is pretty high, even with this economic recession. And the supply is very low - so if you live in the U.S. and are making 20000 USD per year, you're doing something wrong ;-) Heck, that's not enough to pay the rent in San Francisco.

Even junior developers coming fresh out of college are making more than 20k.

In that light, yes 55k is much lower than I could earn if I were located at the heart of the software industry, but I'm pretty happy and feel fortunate about it anyway; although my target is 120k.

So again, if you live in the U.S. 20000 is way low without having extra benefits - like being a co-founder in a startup that will make you rich one day. Even if the projects you're working on are fun, don't sell yourself for pennies. In the long run you'll suffer; not to mention, have you noticed the ageism going on in this industry?

<comment><USER9> Yes, obviously I would like to be making more.

<comment><USER7> 40k might be average for everyone, but for skilled and educated technical folk (which most of us on HN are), 55k is low (at least if you're living in the US).

<comment><USER14> If you are living in an industrialized country and have real technical skills, just do a good job, cover your bases, then ask for 12% more every year. As is often said around here, often your salary is just a line item in the books. You can actually do stuff like look for a new job and say, "You know, I've never made 6 figures. How about you pay me $100k?" and a lot of places will just do it, even if this means they're jumping your income by 25% I know this for a fact, because years ago, that's exactly what I did.

Hint: if you want to do this, try working for companies with money. Energy and energy related companies are like this. Also be prepared for lots of politics and soul-grinding nonsense.</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment>


Norway's Green Delusions - <AUTHOR> https://foreignpolicy.com/2018/09/19/norways-green-delusions-oil-gas-drilling/ <comment><USER2> A summary: "Norway produces oil and exports it. When you drive your car, that's really NORWAY's pollution."

</comment><comment><USER3> This is one of the most contentious topics in Norwegian politics.

The main arguments on the pro-side is that continued oil extraction is profitable (meaning more jobs and larger government budgets) and that Norwegian oil production is less taxing on the climate than the competition (article claims 55 kg co2 per ton vs global average of 130 kg).

On the contra-side you have climate activists arguing that we should stop, or at least decrease, oil production in order to help combat climate change. You also have the fish lobby arguing that starting oil extraction in these locations could be detrimental to the local fish populations. Lofoten in particular is famous for its Skrei cod.

To summarise the political climate (the % is based on quite old numbers, from February this year):

Rødt (Communist Party ~2,9%): Against SV (Socialists, Climate minded ~8,6%): Against AP (Labour ~22,4%): For SP (Farmers, Nationalists ~11,2%): For MDG (Green party, Climate minded ~3,7%): Against Venstre (Liberal party, Climate minded ~3,8%): Against KrF (Christian party ~3,9%): Against Høyre (Conservative party ~28,9%): For FrP (Far right ~13,1%): For

Note that this issue is more important to the small climate oriented parties than it is to the larger parties. Thus the large parties will often use this as a bargaining chip when they need the support of the smaller parties.

My personal impression is that most people in the cities are against, while people working within the petroleum industry and outside the cities are for or neutral.</comment>


The big, ugly affiliate marketing scam - <AUTHOR> http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/12/the-big-ugly-affiliate-marketing-scam/ <comment><USER2> You have a discount code at your checkout? So basically instead of capturing the sale you're ASKING the buyer to google for discount codes.

Think of a sneakier way to give people discount codes that doesn't show it RIGHT THERE ON THE FORM. It makes me feel like I'm getting ripped off when I see discount code and I don't have one.

<comment><USER3> Honest question: when you go to a grocery or department store and they ask if you have any coupons or a rewards card, do you feel like you're getting ripped off? I may feel like I've missed out, but never "ripped off." When I've reached the checkout page it implies this was the best deal I could find.

I do appreciate discounts, but don't feel entitled to them, especially if I'm a first time customer (or opted out of marketing emails). But maybe I'm an outlier and a sense of entitlement is the norm these days.

<comment><USER4> Yes I do. In that case it's a little harder to turn back but I can't help but feel a little like a chump.

<comment><USER5> I feel like a bit of a naughty schoolboy when I go off and find vouchers, it just feels a little bit wrong (but I still do it)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> No shit. This is why you create a page on your site called "Discount Codes". You put in an email signup and offer a small discount coupon. You get the email address in case they abandon and you can re-market to them, and the discount so that they won't abandon, because they found what they were looking for and will complete the transaction. Google will rank you high because its _your_ page and you catch at least some of the search traffic, and you give them what they want with the discount code and they will shop with you. Any retailer worth their salt knows this. Just because coupon sites can game SEO doesn't mean its a scam, it means they're just capitalizing on the fact that you're blind to your customers' behavior

<comment><USER7> Which is exactly what Kogan did and it's now the #2 result when you search for Kogan coupons

www.kogan.com/au/kogan-discount-codes/

> Regular customers of Kogan know that our products are ALWAYS discounted. > Very rarely do we release a Kogan Discount Code or a Kogan Discount Coupon

The #1 result? A scammy looking site but don't worry because "59 people have used this today!" (unsuccessfully of course)

<comment><USER8> [http://www.kogan.com/au/kogan-discount-codes/](http://www.kogan.com/au/kogan- discount-codes/) doesn't exist (anymore?):

'Sorry, we can't find the page you're looking for'

Screenshot: [http://i.imgur.com/LSvh9Av.jpg](http://i.imgur.com/LSvh9Av.jpg)

You get, however, annoying pop-up window if you access this URL …

<comment><USER7> Remove the trailing slash (which reappears when the page loads - 304?). I guess there's multiple URLs and some rewrite magic to get to this page for maximum SEO.

<comment><USER8> Interesting, thanks!

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER9> I was expecting to read about click fraud, but it was just a newbie's experience with running an affiliate program.

Kogan had some wild expectation that the majority of affiliate traffic would be first-time visitors to his site. When he uses _google analytics_ to estimate that only 1.6% of referrals were new customers, he trashes affiliate marketing as a business.

Unfortunately, he spent no time thinking about how to optimize his campaign to reward affiliates for first-time customers, among other things.

<comment><USER10> To his credit, he'd already established that changing commissions from 10% to 5% to 1% made almost no difference to the affiliate schemes behaviour. It seems reasonable to assume that "optimising his campaign to reward affiliates" for any particular behaviour is unlikely to be worthwhile, if 50% and 90% reductions in payouts dosn't motivate them to change anything...

Perhaps an "experienced affiliate marketing user" might get different results, but if you're suggesting that a business who'll mislead you and rip you off happily unless you're a sophisticated-enough user of their service deserves a "trashing" any less than used car salesmen deserve _their_ reputation – I think you're wrong. If _you_ come to me knowing your proposal involves you taking 10% commission on sales - where 98.4% of those sales were mine already, I'd call you out as a thief.

<comment><USER9> If someone chooses to learn the affiliate marketing business through trial and error, more power to them, and I hope they have a lot of cash to burn. There is a lot more to affiliate marketing than giving X% commission for referrals. As I eluded to in my first comment, it is common to pay near 0% commission for return customers and a hefty % for first-time customers. This is a basic scheme that wasn't even attempted before trashing the industry.

I am sure that Kogan has been in business long enough to know not to take what a low-level sales person preaches as fact. Just like Kogan, the sales person also didn't seem to have a clue about affiliate marketing. And, why should he if he can sign new clients who will drop $40K out of the gate?

<comment><USER10> Thanks for the good reply.

A question though, from someone who's inexperienced but very cynical about affiliate marketing – it that sort of option/complexity; to offer very low commissions for return visitors but large commissions for first-timers, actually available through the sort of "affiliate networks" you'd find by searching online?

<comment><USER9> Yes, you define exactly what kind of referrals you want to pay for and for how much.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment> martin-adams "So basically, the affiliates are claiming commission on a sale that was going to happen anyway"

You have someone in your checkout process. Why on earth would you give them a reason to leave that process and go search for a discount code if you know they won't find any? Assuming they will come back doesn't feel right. What if their search for a discount code didn't prove there wasn't one, but did prove a competitor was going to be a) cheaper, b) a better service, c) offering discount codes, or they got distracted by cat videos on YouTube.

And maybe I'm naive here, but since adding affiliate marketing, if the revenue was going to be guaranteed anyway, wouldn't there be a drop in $200,000 from the regular revenue?

<comment><USER11> isn't having a form field for discount codes at checkout a very common approach? I'd say that 90-95% of the websites I normally buy stuff from use it. Amazon does...

<comment><USER12> Being common doesn't mean it's working. Every single time I see a coupon box I _have_ to search for a code. Then sometimes I get pissed if I can't find a discount and go somewhere else.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER13> I don't follow.

Where did the extra $200K in sales come from and why is he not happy about it? It sounds like there is a pool of customers that will not finish the purchase unless they can google "kogan coupon" and hit few coupon sites beforehand (even if to leave these sites emptyhanded). So the affiliates appear to help convincing on-the-fence visitors and push sales to completion. If anything, it's a clever hack. Not sure why he's so pissed.

<comment><USER14> There is no extra $200k (which should have been the first sign -- "we're making $200k less, but the affiliates are making $200k more!").

And since they don't actually give out a coupon, it's doubtful it helps anyone but the affiliates.

<comment><USER15> But he never says that. He doesn't indicate whether revenue increased, decreased, or stayed the same - something that would have been really nice to know.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER16> If you visit the site, put stuff in your cart and get all the way to the checkout page, you must know by that point who sent them to your site. If the customer then goes away and googles for voucher codes, it shouldn't change the source. When (if?) they return, you should know they are the same person, from the same original source.

How did the affiliates manage to steal these customers? It seems to me like your referral tracking is massively broken.

<comment><USER17> Affiliate networks require you put their code on the "thank you" page shown after checkout. Conditionally removing that code would be seen as an attempt to scam the network and get out of paying commissions owed. What you're proposing doesn't work anyway -- you don't know that they didn't come through an affiliate link a week prior; the cookie isn't on your domain, but you owe a commission for that referral.

<comment><USER18> Correct. There's a "blind" tracking pixel at the checkout page that will usually catch the sale in a "last cookie wins" fashion. So on top of the advertisers, anyone actually facilitating the sale by advertising is ripped off by the coupon sites. It's a major pain for the industry - the only surefire way to protect yourself is to get rid of drop either affiliate marketing or coupon codes.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER19> This article is so bad. I mean, there is a lot wrong with the affiliate world. Believe me. And, it attracts more than its fair share of shady characters. But, this guy is reckless and woefully uneducated.

I was all settled in for a sordid tale of intrigue or some yarn about a clever heist. I could spin a few of those stories myself.

But, of all the things this guy picked on, it's that his traffic is searching for discount codes and coming back with an affiliate tag? This is not a scam. It's perfectly legal and anyone wading into affiliate marketing should do his research and understand how it works. It's not just activating a magical digital sales force. Like any other marketing, it needs to be understood, researched, and applied to the business properly (or decided that it is not a good fit for the business).

The first tell-tale sign is that he didn't even know who his affiliates were. He just blindly flipped the switch. He could (and clearly should) have hand- picked his affiliates and worked with them to cultivate the activity he desired. It's ridiculous to blindly open the flood gates and complain about what comes floating in, then declare the whole affiliate marketing space one tremendous scam.

Even now, this is so easily fixable and could really be used to his advantage. His customers are telling him exactly what they want. He also knows where they are going to search for discounts. One supremely simple step would be to start creating and marketing the codes himself to his current customers. Let them know that the best codes are sent to their appreciated customers. Another step would be to cull his affiliate partner list to those where his users (and presumably others like them) are actually going to find his codes. He should also start by working with his account manager on the network (assuming he sprung for one) to devise a strategy around his goals. For instance, on all major networks, he can explicitly indicate that his affiliates cannot engage in keyword bidding or search engine marketing.

There's not enough space here to get into it. I understand his frustration, but he is being irresponsible and reckless in making the generalized statements he's making.

<comment><USER20> "woefully uneducated" indeed. why didn't he tell the affiliate network "no coupon sites, no trademark bidding, and approval required for all new affiliates."

Those are three of the most utterly basic things any new affiliate program would do.

His real complaints should be that he lacks knowledge in this area, didn't hire people who have it, and got poor customer service from his affiliate program.

<comment><USER19> Well (and concisely) put.

He could've easily shut down all of that activity or even experimented with it in a controlled fashion with select affiliates, getting near-immediate feedback and optimizing (or then deciding against it).

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER21> Kogan.com itself seems pretty scammy. An auto-loading give-me-your-email pop- up that doesn't appear to have a close button. Nice.

</comment><comment><USER18> Welcome to the wonderful world of brandbidding - and yes, you facilitated the scam by using coupon codes (hint: by 2013, they do you a major UX disservice for the reasons everyone is mentioning). It's been out there for a decade, but networks still do a horrible job at explaining the situation for you, as they're cashing in as well. Affiliate marketing is no more of a "free lunch" than all the other marketing methods out there. You got to either know your shit to protect yourself from fraud or pay someone to do it for you. Either way, you need to actively manage your publishers and watch out for the metrics you presented for all of the channels you're employing. If you're handing out free money without looking after what you are getting out of it, be sure that there will be someone to claim it. Wisely used and managed, affiliate marketing can definitely be another valuable tool in your marketing chain, but the total costs will be comparable to anything else.

</comment><comment><USER22> There's a lot wrong with this article and it stinks that this person paints the entire affiliate canvas with a poop-colored brush. The fact that they continuously pushed the commission all the way down to 0% is also terrible for affiliates. As people in the comments stated, this was a poorly run affiliate campaign and is no fault but their own. There's "shysters" in every business, and the fact that they pushed down the commission to 0% for all of their affiliates and not just ones taking advantage the coupon code entry field to base their affiliate site on makes me label Kogan.com as "shysters" moreso than all of the affiliates they tried to portary in that light.

Manually approve affiliates that will add value, remove affiliates or don't approve affiliates who are going to advertise non-existent coupon codes. The end, don't treat an affiliate campaign as an easy money button.

edit: And they also seem perplexed that affiliates kept sending $200,000 in sales no matter the commission. True evidence they had no knowledge of how affiliate sites work. If they're performing well, webmasters can essentially set them and forget them. It's not like they're actively working 8 hours a day pushing sales, it can be a static website that never changes as long as the revenue is steady for the affiliate.

<comment><USER12> I want to know what kind of network would keep an advertiser that pays nothing.

</comment></comment><comment><USER23> So it sounds like there's an opportunity for someone here. If you read to the end of the article, you'll note that the actual scam is in spinning up discount code sites.

We need a Rapgenius for online discount codes. Right now, it's full of scummy, crappy sites (just like lyric sites), but could be easily improved with a simple interface, minimal advertising, and collaboratively sourced content.

<comment><USER24> You mean [http://www.retailmenot.com/](http://www.retailmenot.com/)?

<comment><USER25> Retailmenot has gotten much more scammy over the last few years.

<comment><USER4> It's actually gotten more legit. Most of the coupons are seeded there by vendors themselves these days. Which is how they just IPOed for a billion dollars.

<comment><USER26> The original point was to get discount codes that weren't given out willy- nilly by the vendors, so I'd say that makes it less useful/legit, not more.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER17> There are over 600 sites purporting to offer "Improvely coupon codes" despite there never being any kind of coupon code box on my signup form. It's a bit ridiculous, especially since none of these sites are being paid an affiliate commission for their fake coupons.

<comment><USER27> For their fake coupons to your site, that is. If someone ultimately clicks through to another site, the affiliate may still get their commission.

</comment></comment><comment><USER28> While the OP did run into some interesting problems that many of us in Internet Marketing face, I was very thrown off by the direction this post took. There was a pretty substantial lack of understanding of cookie tracking and first-click/last-click attribution.

The affiliates didn't do anything wrong here, which was ironic, because I've met affiliate marketers at conferences in Vegas, and there's PLENTY of shady stuff that some of them do. That said, none of that is taking place here.

Ranking for _" name of company I'm an affiliate for" discount code_ is practically step 1 on the affiliate SEO checklist. This post was almost comically misleading, to be candid.

<comment><USER12> "and there's PLENTY of shady stuff that some of them do". I assume you are talking about things like cookie stuffing and fraudulent purchases. In that case yes it is a scam, but this author is crazy to just flat out say all affiliates are scammers. I bet he sent $400 to nigeria and never got his $2.3 million royalty back.

</comment></comment><comment><USER29> So where did the 200K come from? Or did the sales just remain at status quo, while the affiliate claimed an increase in sales? In which case, why didn't the alarm bells ho off right that second?

<comment><USER30> Person doing the advising was obviously clueless. What happened should have raised a red flag right away.

</comment></comment><comment><USER31> Yeah, I think everyone running an ecommerce site and an affiliate marketing campaign has seen this. I don't think Kogans stats on the new customer percent are really an outlier. I have yet to see a coupon site that I could see actually provided us with any value to have as an affiliate.

We also a long time back went down the road of paying a network a lot of money based on their promises of the type of affiliate sales they could provide. The traffic was horrible, generated a ton of fraud when there actually were sales and the program was canned after probably only 100 sales. So definitely would stay away from any major investment with an affiliate network.

That being said there are good affiliates out there (like to think I have been one myself promoting products rather than ecommerce brands) that will deliver great customers. Likely though you will have to do the leg work to find them, they won't just join your program.

</comment><comment><USER32> The major red flag for me in this article was the line "He couldn't really answer the questions, but I agreed to run a small trial. Based on our results, that marketing consultant is no longer with us." It really colored the rest of the article for me - making me incredibly skeptical of the manager and his instinct, opinions and judgement. It was no surprise then when the reason he was "scammed" was because his checkout process had the form equivalent of a big red call to action saying "leave my site" in the discount code box. I _always_ Google for discount codes when I see those boxes.

If anything, this should be read as an educational piece for consumers about who is really making money when you search for discount codes online, rather than outrage at the affiliate marketing world.

<comment><USER33> _The major red flag for me in this article was the line "He couldn't really answer the questions, but I agreed to run a small trial. Based on our results, that marketing consultant is no longer with us." It really colored the rest of the article for me - making me incredibly skeptical of the manager and his instinct, opinions and judgement._

That's interesting. Here's an article by someone you don't know and, within the first paragraph, you are "incredibly skeptical". I think most people's normal reaction would be to give the guy the benefit of the doubt - after all, it's the first paragraph and that person knows a lot more details about _their_ business than the first paragraph will give away. I think most of us would read that line in the beginning, file it away for verification/thinking as we read the article, then revisit that after we've been presented much more of the article. For you to color your view so easily and quickly is interesting - it's almost akin to someone walking around "looking for a fight".

<comment><USER34> > ...file it away for verification/thinking as we read the article, then > revisit that after we've been presented much more of the article.

That's exactly what _skeptical_ means.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER35> So when someone makes a reasonable suggestion that doesn't work out, you fire them? Yeah, that sounds like a company I'd want to work for.

</comment><comment><USER36> These guys really need a good affiliate manager. On most networks you are allowed to specify the rules - no coupon code sites if you so wish, and all affiliates using it can have their commissions revoked and get banned.

Affiliate marketing can be a great way to make sales - think about it this way: you pay the network, which in turn pays the affiliates say 20%. These affiliates then use their own methods (their own sites, Facebook ads, AdWords, forum posts, a lot of stuff that you'd normally never think of) to drive traffic. They do all the marketing and you make sales - the only thing they don't do is manage your brand, if you are worried about that you're better off without affiliates online.

</comment><comment><USER37> This is not a scam, but simply unawareness by Kogan. Affiliates want to make money - they're rational people. They'll do anything to make money as long as you don't take action.

The funny thing is if you forbid affiliates to have discount codes/coupons, affiliate marketing is not worth it at all. It's only the loopholes that keep affiliate marketing as profitable as it is right now. I mean who in their right mind would want to exert effort to bring traffic where .01% of it converts just for a measly 5% commission? No. You have to cheat a little to make it worthwhile.

</comment><comment><USER38> If you aren't experienced / competent, and you try to outsource it, you're going to get taken. In this case it was marketing, but you could easily be talking about outsourced development, buying a car, seeing a new dentist, etc.

The proper way to introduce affiliate campaigns to your product / service is to succeed using paid advertising in-house. You need to establish your typical CTR, EPC, CPA, LTV, bounce rate, for different channels. Restrict the channels that affiliates use. Once you have your baseline, you can look at the numbers for each individual affiliate to determine their numbers stack up against your baseline. There are a lot more details that can't fit into an HN comment made on my way to work heh.

One concrete example, so it's more tangible. If you don't explicitly restrict pop up traffic, affiliates can pop and drop their cookie when someone with adware installed visits your domain.

Edit: This story is very one sided. Sure the marketing consultant was probably sleazy, and the affiliate marketing tricks were unethical, but the op did not even do basic due diligence. If I were the op, I would at least look at how the affiliate marketing programs of other mature ecommerce sites were set up. Amazon for instance has an affiliate fee of 4% on electronics. Paying 10% instead of 4% as affiliate fees is a red flag. Amazon payouts are made 60 days after the marketing period, where they can conduct their fraud analysis. Also you should be paying very close attention to their operating agreement which outline what does and does not earn you an affiliate fee.

</comment><comment><USER39> We're working on a solution to allow merchants to get users to unlock coupon codes directly on their site (without having to go via an affiliate).

Seeing stellar results so far with plenty of feedback for improvement (we're in beta). If anyone is interested in helping us test the concept further, hit me up!

[https://gleam.io/app/rewards](https://gleam.io/app/rewards)

</comment><comment><USER40> Even though it seems like your setup is not really good, (as others have remarked here) I think the central question you posed here still holds up to some extend: "where do they get their traffic from?".

When getting involved with aff-networks I have noticed that there are quite a lot of 'low quality' (of course depending on your needs) networks around that basically lure people into visiting your site, other than referring truly interesting people to you. That seems like business 1-0-1, but it really amazed me how many large networks use shady landingpages with obscure lotteries and other 'prizes'. (This was a about 2-3 years ago, but still..)

Always do a small run first, track what's happening and why and always be suspicious about people 'selling' you other people's data/attention (data- pushers, is what I used to call them) because that's basically what is is, to some extend.

<comment><USER32> But I think that's the point - the traffic is effective the merchant's own. They're not driving spammy visitors or buying false visits; they're just redirecting the customers who would have already been browsing the site back to the checkout funnel - they'd just get the benefit of the affiliate tracking code added to the order.

<comment><USER40> In this case: yes. (Or for the most part.)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER41> I'm suprised Retailmenot doesn't get called out for this link baiting more often. I've studied their practices for years now and they do alot of shady stuff.

I remember posting coupon codes to their site and having them being taken down constantly because they weren't getting commission on them. They were original company specials so no affiliate was getting paid (including me) but I posted them merely for the people who were searching could save money. They gave users 50% off hosting and the links on the retailmenot page were simply regular links to the products page disguised as specials.

When I emailed them asking why they keep deleting my posted coupon they said that any specials need to be run through them and they need a way to track aka put their affiliate id on them.

Left a bad taste in my mouth.

</comment><comment><USER42> When I saw Ruslan Kogan listed at the top, I thought the story was about him ... same guy who launched the IE tax publicity stunt - got to wonder if this is more of the same.

<comment><USER43> good spot. i was thinking the same myself. he just got a do-follow link from a PR7 blog for this post, so it was definitely worth it.

</comment></comment><comment><USER44> This story would have been just as informative without the words "ugly", "shocked", "shyster" and "scam".

</comment><comment><USER45> This is another reason why you should rank for [your brand name] + coupons / discount. Read Zappo's take on coupons [http://www.zappos.com/truth-about- zappos-coupons](http://www.zappos.com/truth-about-zappos-coupons) . If people know they can save 5-10% by a simple search they will at least try a quick search.

<comment><USER12> Zappos understands that coupons are bad for all sides of the equation. Just give customers the best possible price. Then you don't have to worry about people hijacking your checkout process (which you are pretty much responsible for causing if you use coupon codes).

</comment></comment><comment><USER46> The user flow issue that Ruslan is describing was probably already happening before he signed up for an affiliate program. The only thing that the affiliate programs did was expose that he may want to rethink the way he offers coupons on his site. Like most others have said, whenever I see a "Discount Code" box, I go search for the code.

</comment><comment><USER47> Lessons learned: only pay affiliates whose customers forwards lead to a new shopping session, not an existing shopping session.

</comment><comment><USER48> Sounds like the bigger problem is showing the user a discount code field when not utilizing discount codes.

Remove the field, not the affiliates

</comment><comment><USER49> What about limiting affiliates with advertising a Kogan related keywords and even some traffic sources? I've seen such limitations for many of brands represented in the affiliate networks.

If managed properly affiliate marketing definitely works and yes, it's worth expanding to.

</comment><comment><USER50> Of course a lot of people are trying to leech revenues in Affiliate marketing, that why affiliate need to be reviewed and monitored. It's not a scam you just accepted to do business with people without checking where their traffic comes from.

</comment><comment><USER51> How the hell did he not notice his overall sales not being affected by $200k/wk. I figure you'd be able to tell right away if your sales went up that much.

</comment><comment><USER52> On the topic of networks- anyone know a good affiliate network for startups?

</comment><comment><USER53> This is more than a scam, it's outright theft.

<comment><USER12> It's not theft. You put a coupon code box on your checkout. How can you NOT expect people to go look for coupon codes?

<comment><USER53> My interpretation of the article is they charge the company for a referral even if a coupon isn't found or used. That's theft. Or did I misread? It's not just looking for coupon codes (which isn't bad) but mischarging. (It's not the customer that's stealing, it's the referral service)

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER54> I don't quite get it.

Was there sales _growth_ of 200K or not? Yes/No - it's that simple.

It seems like this would be the main thing to look at.

But instead the post goes into hypothesis - almost like either:

A) The answer is so blatantly No that it does not need addressing.

B) He's trying to sweep the above question away because he dislikes the idea of Affiliates driving _previous visitors_ back for more business.

</comment><comment><USER30> It's called cookie stuffing. Your company should have done your research before doing affiliate marketing and taken steps to prevent this kind of fraud.

<comment><USER17> Cookie stuffing is something different; that usually refers to outright trickery like embedding affiliate links in images or malware. This is just affiliates taking advantage of the fact that if you put a coupon code box on a checkout form, people will search for coupons right before checking out. Run a coupon site, put a "click here to activate coupon" link on it, and suddenly you're being paid for sales the merchant was already going to get.</comment></comment>