bskinny129

Plus I believe Feynman’s baby brother died from an infected hangnail. Going off memory from Gleick’s book, so please correct if slightly off.

Let me explain a bit more. I don't suggest raising prices for early customers who are receiving the same product they signed up for originally. They can stay at the same price, which is grandfathering them in.

More typical though is Customer 1 signs up in 2015 when the product had features AB. Then in 2018 the product adds feature C. Is it fair to raise prices on them? Maybe, maybe not. In this case, I would still recommend today doubling prices for all new customers. You can go back to Customer 1 and say either:

1) we raised prices, but since you are an early supporter you get the current price for life with features ABC (if feature D is added, don't give it to them for free, they have to upgrade to the new pricing).

2) we raised prices since adding feature C is providing more value, but as an early supporter we are going to keep you at the original rate for 1 more year.

Definitely double the prices right now. Since there is a free version that is generous, it won’t be “selling out”. I’m sure it felt right back years ago, but think of how much the product has improved since then. You can grandfather all current customers in (or just a year) if it makes it feel better.

I am impressed by that video from 99designs. How much did you spend? Do you have a link to their profile?

And while you're here, have you read Joseph Tainter's "Collapse of Complex Societies"? He is a very underrated thinker in the lack-of-progress area you've shown interest in.

I've been using Stripe for several years and love it. Switching to payment intents this year was seamless.

One thing I'd love you guys to do is create your own QuickBooks connection app. Most companies offer their own - yours is through Sush.io with your logo and bad ratings. I can't get it to work and I'm not the only one.

Methane doesn't have a half-life, but you are correct it doesn't stay around forever. In about a decade it will react to become carbon dioxide and water vapor, which both contribute to warming themselves.

Scientists know this when they state that over a 100 year period, methane traps 32 times more heat than CO2 [1]. This is the number widely cited. Over a 20 year period it is even worse: 104 times greater! Considering we are trying to drastically reduce the human contribution to global warming over the next 10 to 20 years, methane is a great thing to focus on.

Other thoughts:

It is interesting that the cow population only increased 35% since 1960 according to that source. But what about the methane per cow? Some quick searches suggests the slaughter age may have decreased from 3 years to 15 months during that time. They are growing much faster, fed grain that leads to the methane burps. At a minimum several times more emissions per cow.

CO2 only sticks around for 100 years, by your line of reasoning we should just shrug that off too?

[1] http://science.sciencemag.org/content/326/5953/716

I see it more as a stop-gap. Reducing some of the damage transitioning to renewable energy over the next 1-3 decades. And optimistically doing my small part.

Approval accepted and I will stay away from the kool-aid.

I would argue being vegan is a very hard change, equivalent in my mind to asking people who care about the environment to never fly or get in a car with an internal combustion engine. Those people exist, but man is that a lot to ask!

It is a much smaller ask to opt into paying 5 cents more for a burger to offset. But with travel the connection to emissions is more obvious and wealthy people have a larger share (a rich person doesn't eat 10x more steak than average, but does fly 10x more).

No vig

The tough part about a problem of massive scale is no solution is good enough. So you sit around debating a global carbon tax for decades while attacking any other effort that is an incremental approach?

Hopefully this is a more palatable solution for skeptics than a big carbon tax or even doing nothing. There is an obvious connection between cars and airplanes spewing gunk into the air, you don't need to make a case with global warming models - just be responsible for your own mess and nothing more. Everyone understands pollution and being responsible for their direct actions.

> A Climeworks app could be installed on my smartphone, he explained. It could then be activated by my handset’s location services. “You fly over here to Europe,” he explained, “and the app tells you that you have just burned 1.7 tons of CO₂. Do you want to remove that? Well, Climeworks can remove it for you. Click here. We’ll charge your credit card. And then you’ll get a stone made from CO₂ for every ton you sequester.” He sat back and sighed. “That would be my dream,” he said.

That's what I'm working on! Get people who care to take personal responsibility for their own travel. It is just $2-4 dollars a week - a tiny sum for people who fly frequently. In beta for iOS now if you are interested in giving it a shot: https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance

An independent app has the benefit of not being stuck with just this Climeworks best case $100/ton direct air capture. Soils and grasslands seem to be a low hanging fruit closer to $10/ton.

It was also fun diving into React Native for the first time, I learned a lot. I used a starter kit (https://market.nativebase.io/view/react-native-fiber-firebas...) I would definitely recommend as it provided a lot more structure than just learning from tutorials.

I started https://pledgebalance.com/ in February and just launched an iOS beta group this month. It's an app to balance the negative impact of your daily travel with tiny payment that goes 100% to carbon offsets. My drive today was 17¢ to balance, which is invested in projects like planting trees.

Only $50 of revenue this month, but hopefully will grow quickly from there. Also will add premium features like corporate accounts for additional fees, though will never take a cut of a person's balanced travel.

go on...

> What if I just can’t avoid that flight, or cut down on driving? If you simply can’t make every change that’s needed, consider offsetting your emissions with a trusted green project

> we are still decades away from commercial flights running on solar energy

Offsets need to be a bigger part of the conversation. This article buried it at #10, behind a bunch of changes no one is likely to do. It is so incredibly cheap, they should have brought it up earlier in the article and give exact numbers in order to result in more personal actions.

I'll quote you some numbers to show just how accessible offsets are for people who fly. A rough estimate is about 1% of the ticket: - SF to San Diego: 68 cents - SF to New York: $3.87 - SF to Paris: $8.43

Driving is similar, to offset a gallon of gas it is about 9 cents, tack on 2-3% more than what you pay at the pump.

I understand that it isn't ideal to pollute then clean it up [0], but this is a much more practical solution than asking people to stop traveling. The cost is so low that just about everyone who is doing the flying and driving can afford it.

The concern is that by putting a price to clear your conscience for a bad behavior you will induce more of that behavior [1]. I would argue that personal travel isn't very correlated in this manner. How many people cut back their travel now because of their emissions? Very few. Would the average person who hasn't cut back suddenly start traveling more? Doubtful. It's not like they will suddenly drive for fun or it was factoring in on their vacation decisions [2]. So while I would be hesitant to put a price on all bad environmental behaviors, I think travel is safe.

> Social scientists have found that when one person makes a sustainability-oriented decision, other people do too.

That's good news! First make it easier to take an action, then make it easier for it to be public. That's why I'm working on an app that is a personal pledge to balance the negative impact of your travel.

While carbon offsets exist, they are an infrequent action that cost a lot at once, and are opaque. We will make it more frequent for smaller amount of money, give a scoreboard of your continued impact, and help make it visible for inspiring others to join.

If anyone is interested in keeping in the loop on progress: https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance

[0]: YC recently asked for carbon removal technology startups. It will continue to get more impactful than simply planting trees, and those projects that prove successful will need money to scale. http://carbon.ycombinator.com/

[1]: Freakonomics looked at a daycare that added a small fee for late pick up. The rate of late pickups quickly shot up. https://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/15/books/chapters/freakonomi...

[2]: If anything, this vast majority who aren't changing their actions now would become more aware and cut back.

This is exactly why I think offsets are a better short-term solution. Don't travel is too big of an ask even for the "eco aware". Would they pay an extra 17 cents to offset their driving that day or $3 for a flight across the US? It is shockingly cheap and much easier to say yes to that change. It isn't as direct as just not traveling in the first place, but will get much more adoption.

I'm working on an app to make a personal travel offset pledge and track your impact publicly. If anyone is interested in keeping in the loop on progress: https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance

I'll have to check them out, thanks for sharing. I did hear of another blockchain carbon project, but this one seems more promising at first glance.

It does seem tricky. A worthy adversary even.

Look 10 years out in the future though and I think it is easy to imagine 1) many more people care about this 2) the urgency they feel is increased. Can we start with the Patagonias of the world (there are many others) and build some traction? Can we make it something that young employees want and bring transparency to which companies participate? If it can give a slight edge to McKinsey over Bain for example, the cost is trivial.

[Update regarding above: no YC interview, which is understandable based on where things currently stand]

I believe a business model helps align incentives and increases potential scale. Certainly things can evolve, but the plan is no cut from users and charge businesses a markup to balance employee commute and flights. Hopefully can make it in the businesses self-interest where they see a return on their small investment in terms of employee satisfaction and retention.

As long as those houses don't burn down...

For now money will be passed along to the best-in-class organizations doing hands-on carbon removal projects - I believe there are several excellent non-profits with the right efficiency and transparency. Yet even though these great organizations exist and plenty of people care about the environment, hardly any money ends up on their hands. I think there is great grass-roots potential to change this and it is equally as important as marginally improving the efficiency of carbon removal tech.

I'm working on a way to bring dollars to carbon removal, whether as simple as planting trees or investing in these more advanced upcoming technologies. It is an app with a personal pledge to balance the negative impact of your own driving and flying with a small payment. Cheap at just a couple dollars a week, with the potential to reach a significant scale through companies. In fact, I look forward to hearing back from YC later today!

If anyone is interested in keeping in the loop on progress: https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance

Great timing! I also believe it takes personal actions, not waiting on someone else.

My personal pledge is to balance the negative impact of my driving and flying. If you are interested, check out the app I'm building for it: https://www.producthunt.com/upcoming/pledge-balance

I just started reading a book that got me thinking about this - Conspiracy: Peter Thiel, Hulk Hogan, Gawker, and the Anatomy of Intrigue [0]

If you can remove just a couple of the worst actors from the internet, does it have an outsized benefit? Are those people defining "acceptable behavior" and by example giving more reasonable people permission to behave that way? Interesting questions regardless of the specifics of the Thiel/Gawker case.

[0 affiliate]: https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Ryan-Holiday/dp/0735217645... [0 non-affiliate]: https://www.amazon.com/Conspiracy-Ryan-Holiday/dp/0735217645

Hey Tony - I've been planning on reaching out to you. I've run Breakout Mentors (https://breakoutmentors.com/) for almost 7 years now (mostly Bay Area, some online) so one of the longest for the hot kid coding space. Plus started the CoderDojo Silicon Valley chapter (http://www.coderdojosv.org/) and ran the tech side of things for a few years. Hit me up at [email protected]