So, how did a semi-polluted strip mall-ridden urban-industrial-suburb bounded by the Transverse Ranges win such an esteemed place in my heart? From where I stand, where others fall short, the Valley effortlessly embodies the cultural patchwork metaphor so indiscriminately applied to most major Californian cities. A fateful confluence of events — namely, affordable housing prices, relatively decent schools, and enough cheap flat land to comfortably plop a half dozen Costcos — came together to sustain a charming and diverse community that sits on the literal and figurative outskirts of LA-chic.

As the uglier, poorer, and less hip conjoined sibling of the greater Los Angeles Basin, the SFV has always felt like an underdog to me. If I’m being perfectly honest, my defense of the Valley comes from a rather personal place. Ethnically, the Valley is me. Like Los Angeles, it’s comprised mainly of Latinos (more specifically, Mexicans) and Whites, but with a slightly higher preponderance of Jews. Being half-Mexican with a Jewish surname and distinctly Valley Girl speech pattern — to slander the Valley would be, in essence, to discount my core identity.

It wasn’t always like this. Growing up, I learned early on to be ashamed of my geographic patrimony. As a third generation resident, even the phrase “over the hill” to describe the physical trek a Westsider must make to enter the Valley struck me as a thinly veiled slight against our passé gaucheness in the face of the more on-trend Santa Monica, Malibu, and West Hollywood environs.

I was born in the Northridge Hospital and spent my first years of life in the bustling epicenter of the San Fernando Valley — Panorama City. As luck would have it, a mere four years later, Northridge would birth another semi-destructive force in the form of a 6.7 magnitude earthquake. Shortly after the ’94 Earthquake, my parents made the sensible decision to move from the densest part of the Valley to its least dense, Shadow Hills. If the Valley was considered lame by LA standards, Shadow Hills — where horses seemed to outnumber people and bumpy dirt roads divided me from my schoolmates — was lame by Valley standards.

While far from being the most glamorous, the Valley has served as the backbone and backdrop of the Los Angeles entertainment industry. From adult films in Chatsworth, sitcoms in Burbank, and the renaissance of reality TV in Calabasas, the SFV has always played a reliable supporting actor to Hollywood’s leading man. To those who fancy themselves connoisseurs of high culture, the Valley, home to nary a museum or national landmark, may be written off as a wasteland of sorts. But to do so would be to neglect the many vibrant histories and cultures that join together to create an origin story that is oh so definitively LA.

What I love most about the San Fernando Valley are the multitudes contained within it. One need only drive 10 minutes in either direction to enter into an entirely different world of food, people, and language. In the cult classic Clueless, a celebration of both Valleyspeak and 90’s teen vapidity, a Beverly Hills snob bristles at the thought of venturing into the deeper trenches of the Valley. To repurpose a line from the film’s protagonist, the Valley is “a full-on Monet” — you may need to take a couple steps back to fully appreciate how its clashing mosaic of cultures and identities coalesce to create a veritable masterpiece of human expression.

The Valley is home to all the people, places, and memories that matter most to me. In truth, the Valley could have been anywhere — my connection is not with its mountains, boba shops, or sun-scorched lawns. It’s the feeling of “home” that transcends time and place. Landscapes that will outlive the people I love and serve as living containers of our stories. Simple stories of spending entire afternoons thrift store shopping, taco truck sampling, and getting hopelessly lost in our collective familiarity.

Dear TaskRabbit,

This should of course go without saying, but I feel the need to put it in writing after walking past your advertisements over the past couple months.

ALL people deserve to “live life” — not just those fortunate enough to outsource their chores to others while they attend yoga. To base an entire ad campaign off the premise that one must pay a premium in order to enjoy life is incredibly tone deaf.

By the way, who’s the invisible “we” in the billboards you’ve plastered across the city? Do they have time to devote to self care? Who’s looking after their children while they’re mopping our floors? Are they earning a living wage in the most expensive city in America? Do you even care?

San Francisco has all but normalized the aggressive erasure and expulsion of an entire group of people (read: working class residents of color), all while relying on their cheap labor to meet a voracious need for on-demand pampering. These people are welcome to serve us, but they certainly don’t have a seat at the table. In fact, we’ve been forcing them out of the city in droves.

TL;DR Happiness is not reserved for the elite. People do not exist to serve you. No matter his or her educational background or yearly income — a human being should not be reduced to a mere means to someone else’s more glamorous end.

Hacker Noon is how hackers start their afternoons. We’re a part of the @AMI family. We are now accepting submissions and happy to discuss advertising & sponsorship opportunities.

If you enjoyed this story, we recommend reading our latest tech stories and trending tech stories. Until next time, don’t take the realities of the world for granted!

Do better, TaskRabbit. was originally published in HackerNoon.com on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

Seems fair, right?

PITFALLS OF SUBSCRIPTION PRICING

In the SaaS space, with the average implementation spanning several months and costing the equivalent of 0.75 to 2 times the annual subscription cost, paying for seats only to have them to go unused is a jagged pill for many companies to swallow.

Even after go-live, many enterprise-grade SaaS tools struggle, or outright fail, to reach monthly active user (MAU) metrics that justify their often exorbitant recurring subscription costs. Furthermore, in this constantly evolving job market, asking potential buyers to anticipate their full-time workforce one year — or even one month — in advance is becoming less and less realistic.

While there are certainly some compelling advantages to the subscription-based model (ability to forecast annual expenditures and uncapped per seat usage for starters), only a well-executed Pay-Per-Use pricing model can satisfy consumer demand for increased flexibility and cost-efficiency.

Across the space, successful players like Mixpanel (mobile analytics), Twilio (telephony), Concur (T&E reporting), GitHub (code repository), Amazon Web Services (cloud infrastructure), and Onfleet (delivery management) are leading the pack by offering tailored Pay-Per-Use (or data point, SMS, GB, report, repository, task, etc.) pricing options.

WHY PPU MAKES SENSE

So what’s in it for SaaS providers? Not only does it eliminate user throttling, a phenomenon by which growth and engagement are stifled within an organization due to license scarcity, the colloquially dubbed “pay-as-you-go” model greatly mitigates the assumed risk and barrier to entry for prospective buyers.

In such a scenario, the onus is on the SaaS provider to demonstrate and deliver consistent value, rather than the buyer to artificially create and sustain it. Thus, a company that has confidence in their value proposition can look forward to attracting a much broader pool of potential customers to their product. Once sold, there’s no question that increased product stickiness and adoption within an organization directly translates to positive growth in ARR.

In return, enterprise customers can rest assured that they are only invoiced for the real value they derive from using a given service and, most importantly, aren’t locked into paying an annual flat rate for costly seats and features that sit untouched.

Not to worry, the “unlimited” subscription model is here to stay for many of our beloved B2C products and services — it’s to thank for countless Netflix binges (#OITNB), mile-long SMS conversations, and mailrooms filled to the brim with Amazon Prime deliveries (I know, I know, you really needed that [insert impulse buy here]).

However, in a B2B climate that has become increasingly cost-conscious, value-centric pricing models represent an exciting, and mutually beneficial, new frontier.

Pay-Per-Use, not User? was originally published in HackerNoon.com on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

In this land of on-demand rice milk and artisanal honey, it’s easy to ignore some of the less glamorous realities at play — namely, global food insecurity and mounting landfill waste. Last September, the United Nations finalized 17 sustainable development goals, which over 150 world leaders publicly committed to upholding. Number 12 on that ambitious list, Responsible Consumption and Production, focuses on reducing global food, water, and energy waste by 2030. If that seems at odds with the scenario presented above, you might be on to something.

By UN estimates, the food sector accounts for 70% of the world’s water usage, 30% of the world’s energy consumption, and 22% of greenhouse gas emissions. Each year a staggering one-third of all food that is produced globally goes to waste, all while 2 billion people go hungry or undernourished. With the world population expected to reach 8.3 billion by 2030, if left unchecked, this cycle of booming production and profligate waste will only worsen.

Two Onfleet customers are hoping to change our collective fate by leveraging the On-Demand model to combat both food waste and hunger in the United States. DC-based Hungry Harvest donates a healthy meal to a person in need with every fresh produce delivery it makes, while Imperfect lets you buy fresh, “beautiful on the inside,” produce directly from local farmers at a significant discount. These young companies partner with farmers and produce wholesalers to purchase and redistribute surplus fruits and vegetables that would have otherwise gone straight to the landfill. To date, the Hungry Harvest team has successfully recovered approximately 200,000 pounds of produce for sale and donation. Another Onfleet-powered start-up, Feeding Forward, has fed over 600,000 people since its launch by seamlessly connecting large-scale food donors with nearby community centers, food banks, and shelters.

In tandem with efforts to promote sustainable agriculture and reduce food waste, we must also tackle another massive threat to the realization of global goal #12 — food packaging waste. Each year in the US alone, we go through an estimated 40 billion plastic forks, knives, and spoons, 50 billion plastic water bottles, and a whopping 100 billion single use plastic bags. According to a report from the Environmental Protection Agency, in 2012 Americans generated 251 million tons of solid landfill waste, or roughly 4.38 pounds per person, per day. Plastics accounted for 12.7% of this total, which is truly horrifying when you consider the fact that almost every single piece of plastic ever created still exists in some form today.

To upcycle an old saying, “A moment on the lips, a lifetime on the hips in our landfills and oceans.” In fact, make that several lifetimes, as the average plastic container takes over 450 years to fully decompose. And, while scientists have made great strides in discovering novel ways to break down plastic waste faster (see: polyethylene-eating worms), doing our part to reduce daily plastic consumption is paramount.

According to Lauren Singer, zero-waste lifestyle guru behind Trash is for Tossers, “Consumers need easier access to products that align with [global goal 12], and right now they’re just not getting it.” Leading the pack in these efforts is newcomer Rubicon Global, a DiCaprio-backed start-up quickly gaining notoriety as the “Uber for Trash.” Rubicon has taken a high tech approach to commercial waste hauling and recycling by eliminating costly inefficiencies, harnessing the power of Big Data analytics, and creating financial incentives for the adoption of sustainable business practices. Proving definitively that you can indeed turn trash into treasure, last month Rubicon closed a $50M round of funding after announcing plans for an On-Demand trash collection app geared towards consumers.

Not to be outdone, Uber piloted a similar concept in Beirut this past summer, when a period of government inaction left residents with limited access to waste collection services. The week-long #UberRECYCLE campaign offered free recyclable waste pick-ups throughout the city with the help of local partners Live Love Beirut and Advanced Car Rental.

Recent advancements in the availability and quality of fast meal options have no doubt revolutionized the way in which we interact with food. With more and more traditional grocery and restaurant chains entering the On-Demand space, either with their own delivery fleets or via middlemen like DoorDash, Instacart, and GrubHub, we must ensure that industry standards support — rather than undermine — global efforts toward sustainability. As demonstrated by the success of Hungry Harvest, Imperfect, and Rubicon, these same advancements can be leveraged to solve some of today’s most pressing global issues. Although it’s certainly not convenient to discuss the negative externalities our daily meal choices have on the environment, such discussions are not only warranted, but truly critical to the health and well-being of both our planet and species.

If tech truly is the industry of the future, let’s work to make it one we can all be proud of — here’s to a greener and more equitable 2030.

For tips on what you can do to offset yesterday’s Postmates binge, check out Lauren’s simple and painless zero-waste hacks.