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Show HN: Find the most climate friendly meeting location

• e12e 4y ago
  Does this account for number of people and trains/boat etc? [ed: on mobile so can't launch the app]
  • mtmail 4y ago
    It doesn't. Flights/airports only.
  • mplanchard 4y ago
    You can add an airport multiple times to account for multiple people coming from the same place.
    • glaucon 4y ago
      When I do that it doesn't make any difference to the Total CO2. I just did Glasgow/London and then added an extra Glasgow and the total didn't change. In any case, as I've mentioned elsewhere, the CO2 seems to be based on the entire aircraft rather than per passenger, whether or not this is a good idea depends on the intention of the person looking at the tool.
• ksniwmidjd 4y ago
  [flagged]
• kushie 4y ago
  why cant i view on mobile
• furyofantares 4y ago
  How many times is it acceptable to post the same Show HN? (Genuine question)
  • deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
  • schemescape 4y ago
    > You can post a new release as a Show HN only if the new version is significantly different. It shouldn't just be an incremental upgrade. If you do repost, add a comment linking to the previous Show HN and explaining what is different from last time. This should probably only happen once or twice a year—more starts to be excessive. It’s in the “Show HN” -> Tips link: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22336638 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22336638 Of course, this and many other submissions just seem to have resubmitted until getting traction. I don’t know what to say about that
• iso8859-1 4y ago
  Isn't it better to meet in a place where one of the people is already located? Then one less person has to fly, and they can use their saved time to work and offset the CO2 spent by the additional time traveled by the others.
  • wolrah 4y ago
    > Isn't it better to meet in a place where one of the people is already located? Then one less person has to fly, and they can use their saved time to work and offset the CO2 spent by the additional time traveled by the others. I'm not sure if the tool specifically accounts for that or if the math just ends up working out, but I was testing with various combinations of my family and it always ended up at someone's home airport.
    • capableweb 4y ago
      > I'm not sure if the tool specifically accounts for that or if the math just ends up working out, but I was testing with various combinations of my family and it always ended up at someone's home airport. Not sure. But if you put the two locations of Caracas, VE and San Francisco, US, they suggest meeting in Houston, US. Does it make sense? Is it more environmental friendly for two people to meet in the middle rather than having one person staying and the other going there? My gut says the latter should be more environmental friendly.
      • kortilla 4y ago
        Better for one to travel. A disproportionate amount of a flight’s fuel is in takeoff and climb. Meeting in Houston is far worse because you’ve doubled the required takeoff rolls.
        • jamilton 4y ago
          The tool claims to take that into account, it breaks it down in the "show report" button. Liftoff is 3 tons of CO2.
        • 4y ago
• wolrah 4y ago
  This is a really neat tool, but I'm having a hard time imagining situations where it'd be all that useful, where people from substantially different locations all need to meet in person, but don't care where they're meeting. How often does that happen? Am I missing something?
  • jsharf 4y ago
    I think for academic conferences, they typically choose a venue that changes every year. This could be used to aid in selecting a venue.
    • Jolter 4y ago
      They won’t know who’s attending then they book the venue. It works the other way around, usually. And of course, if you don’t know who’s attending…
  • jameshart 4y ago
    Remote-first companies encounter this problem all the time.
    • ytdytvhxgydvhh 4y ago
      Do they? I feel like remote-first companies seem to enjoy having an excuse to travel to exciting destinations as a recruitment/retention perk. “We’re meeting in Kansas City because that minimizes emissions” likely doesn’t spark joy in the same way that “we’re meeting in the Bahamas because we’re cool and fun!” would.
      • micromacrofoot 4y ago
        I refuse to fly to corporate meetings due to climate impact, and I have a few colleagues that do the same, so I don’t think this is universally true. I would respect a company that didn’t.
        • 4y ago
• cagenut 4y ago
  first off thank you, anything even remotely down this road is the right direction. as a UI bug, when I typed "ewr" or even "newark" it shows zero search results. strangely if i back off just one character on either then it does show newark liberty international airport. for some reason the search is penalizing you for finishing the string. a second one, the show report button didnt work at all. product suggestion: make the results a unique url that can be shared amongst coworkers planning an event. they should be able to edit it like a google doc to collaboratively update how many people are flying from what locations, and then everyone can reference the shared url to see the calculated result. last thing, can you share some of the tech details behind how you made the globe/flight-visualizations?
• coding123 4y ago
  Zoom.com
• user3939382 4y ago
  Peak of Everest
• SECProto 4y ago
  It doesn't work well (graphically) if you choose eg, something in australia and something in the US. Shows the Australia flight travelling West across all of africa (when it actually travels northeast, across the ocean)
• zenlf 4y ago
  It would be funny if it redirects to Zoom.
  • capableweb 4y ago
    As funny as if you have a "ATM Locator" application that redirects you to the bank mobile application. What if I actually want cash in hand?
• realworldperson 4y ago
  [dead]
• andai 4y ago
  Any reason this wouldn't work as a mobile app?
• tbabej 4y ago
  Europe has quite a few high-quality, high-speed rail connections. If I may suggest a feature, in order for the tool is to be faithful to its mission, alternative mods of transport could be supported as well. Personally, I am more than happy to take an overnight train than a short-flight, given the additional overhead of travelling to/from the airport. An overnight train can take you pretty far within continental Europe.
  • melx 4y ago
    That's what I'm going to do this August with my 3yr old as we'll be visiting friends and family etc. I'd be taking a train to London (about 3h), then EuroStar to Paris (2h 15), then to Berlin (about 8h). Total time ~13 hours. Flight time for me to Berlin is ~4h, but to get to Airport and the wait for boarding brings it probably close to 8h, but then I can't visit the relatives in Paris that easy. Actually I don't like flying that much these days (the eco reasons aside).
    • riedel 4y ago
      This is the ideal case. However, I have been involved in quite a bit of European projects and it is not that easy. Last meeting was in Poznan and I could have used the train via Berlin from south Germany, but somehow I have not been able to book any night trains lately and traveling over the day would have taken a whole day of my work week instead of half. Next trip is the other direction to The Hague. I will take the train but last time I had to replan my trip 3 times while traveling due to cancellations and delays. I don't want to fly but I am always totally stressed after long train trips. To a typical meeting people from like 10 countries come in a European research project. Traveling from Germany to Spain or even Greece is not really feasible by train until we get better night train connections (only Austrian rail is actually operating them, but there seems currently no chance to book them)
      • throwaway049 4y ago
        Do you have the option to use the train seat as a work space? That way daytime train travel is still useful.
• bagels 4y ago
  Interested, but not enough to do the research, if the data takes in to account the fact that you won't find direct flights to most of the places it chooses as the meeting spot.
• jedberg 4y ago
  It seems like once you have a few points in North America and Europe, the answer is always Iceland, no matter how many other cities you add. I guess this makes sense, but it's interesting to see visualized.
• outside1234 4y ago
  Strange that it doesn't choose one of the locations people are in. For example, for me it chose Toronto for an international meeting even tho one of the folks attending was from New York City. Why not NYC to prevent one person from traveling. Also, you need weighting, as often there are multiple people from a location.
  • mplanchard 4y ago
    You can add an airport multiple times to weight for multiple people
• galacticaactual 4y ago
  No thanks.
• msla 4y ago
  Does this only work on locations in Europe?
• cristiioan 4y ago
  I find the idea great, but there are a few issues with it. The biggest ones I have found is that when there are multiple people flying from the same airport, it won't redo the math to try to find a better location. Also it is more fuel efficient for just one to fly than two when there are only two people.
  • capableweb 4y ago
    > The biggest ones I have found is that when there are multiple people flying from the same airport, it won't redo the math to try to find a better location. Yeah, I saw this too. I started by choosing three locations in Russia, which put the meeting point somewhere in the middle of Russia. Then I added 10-15 departures in Europe. Realistically, the meeting point should be somewhere in Europe/Eastern Europe at that point, as there is only three departures from Russia. But the meeting point remained in middle/center Russia.
• abeppu 4y ago
  I entered the 3 US airports I use most frequently, and I was told to meet at an airforce base.
• blumomo 4y ago
  It’s not the one time meetings that are a problem. It’s a problem when it becomes a habit to fly super regularly, on a daily or weekly basis. Picking climate friendly locations for a one off meeting has close to zero impact.
  • e12e 4y ago
    I agree with the general sentiment (fix harmful habits first, exceptions later) - but if we set the ideal at no flights - then even a few mid-distance flights come out as pretty bad.
  • switchbak 4y ago
    Agreed. I've met a bunch of people that literally commute via airplane. That's just crazy to me. A one off meeting isn't going to move the needle as compared to that.
• 1270018080 4y ago
  It would be cool to see the non-euclidean paths. Still very nice.
• someweirdperson 4y ago
  The cheapest place to meet at is usually some destination for tourists, ouside of vacation season of couse.
• jeffbee 4y ago
  I like the way this instantly produces PDFs. Very slick. I'm not sold on the math because it doesn't seem to take into account connecting flights. At least, it does not seem clear that me in SFO and my colleague in KEF should meet in Yellowknife, NT, Canada. It's an airport neither of us could reach directly on commercial flights. Considering they would need to fly the wrong way to FRA first, it seems like MSP or YUL make way more sense.
• Temporary_31337 4y ago
  I’ve found it- it’s the metaverse ;)
• pimlottc 4y ago
  Feature request: You should be able to look up airports by their IATA airport codes
• dzogchen 4y ago
  Flying is not climate friendly. Pretty useless.
• meindnoch 4y ago
  So... online?
• mrtweetyhack 4y ago
  [dead]
• microtherion 4y ago
  There seems to be an underlying assumption that direct flights will be available to the meeting city from all the locations. This is not particularly realistic for long distance meetings, and for shorter distances, why not use rail? In my case, I used Shanghai, San Francisco, and Zurich. The suggested location was Fairbanks, AK, which for the Zurich & Shanghai based team members would mean a 24 hour, two stop flight. I think we'll pass. Adding London to the equation shifts the meeting point to… Tromsø, Norway, which demonstrates the absurdity of the geographical micro-optimization perfectly. Picking Stockholm or Oslo in the same neighborhood would have saved literally every participant a stop on their itinerary.
  • netsharc 4y ago
    Hmm, considering the transit locations of flights, and how much CO2 it costs to get from the different points, would make it a weighted-graph-traversing exercise... Would be a fun CS101, or CS201 assignment...
• yosito 4y ago
  > Open this site on a desktop to view the app. You know, smartphones are capable of displaying websites in desktop mode. Why do you block mobile users' experience like this? I don't have my laptop with me, and won't until Monday. Not being able to take a look at your app in the meantime means I probably never will.
• deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
• Dalewyn 4y ago
  The correct answer is on the internet: Using Zoom, Discord, Skype, Teams, Facetime, or whatever your favored medium of internet video communications is. In this day and age, particularly in the wake of covid lockdowns, meetings in the flesh are a waste of time and money, let alone the resources; and I say that as someone who doesn't subscribe to environmentalism. You need to talk to someone? Radio and telephones solved that a century ago. You need to see someone face to face? Video conferencing solved that a decade or two ago. The only exception is if you must physically exchange something with the other person(s). Otherwise, whatever excuse you have to meet up with someone is vapid; save the time, money, and resources and just fire up Zoom.
  • h10h10h10 4y ago
    [dead]
• glaucon 4y ago
  Total CO2 seems to be for the flight, rather than per passenger ? That might be a good idea or a bad idea but, for me, it would seem to be more suited to private jets rather than scheduled flights ? I'm really not sure, it's for the writer to say.