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Here's the real story, to my mind: >>> The Weather Service held a public forum Tuesday to discuss the proposal and answer questions. When asked about the inves

Here's the real story, to my mind: >>> The Weather Service held a public forum Tuesday to discuss the proposal and answer questions. When asked about the investment in computing infrastructure that would be required for these limits to not be necessary, agency officials said a one-time cost of about $1.5 million could avert rate limits. The NOAA budget for fiscal 2020 was $5.4 billion. Buchanan, however, stated the actual cost to address the issue would be higher because the $1.5 million “would comprise just one component of what has to be a multifaceted solution.” The officials at the forum also said that senior management at the Weather Service was aware of the relatively small cost of addressing the issue but that the agency faced “competing priorities.” <<< So, the cost to fix would be peanuts, but it's "not a priority". Sounds like pretty typical corporate bureaucracy against improving infrastructure and efficiency until they're forced to. Using their numbers, it'd still only something like .2% of their budget, if the cost was 10x the $1.5m figure.

deleted 6y ago
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chrisseaton 6y ago
> So, the cost to fix would be peanuts, but it's "not a priority" But there are probably thousands of things that cost only peanuts and aren't a priority. If you fix them all they add up to not peanuts and then you don't have any money left and you didn't even fix any priority tasks!
- Naac 6y ago
  But out of those thousand things only this one made the news no? Doesn't it deserve some extra priority?
- falcolas 6y ago
  Serving the public should always be a priority for a government institution. In the case of the weather, disseminating the forecasts is just as critical as making the forecasts in the first place. These forecasts directly affect everything from air travel to crop planting/harvesting to sea travel. They are critical for our economic (and citizen's) ongoing health. And the internet, for better or worse, is the primary means of dissemination for the NOAA. Failing in this is failing at one of their greatest duties, IMO.
  - yetihehe 6y ago
    Instead, government institutions which are funded by government, now serve government as their main client. Public, which pays government, not institutions, is not a priority. Effectively government became an entity which is not serving the public but only itself.
    - Retric 6y ago
      The “problem” is if NOAA directly provides data to the general public then an entire ecosystem of companies that simply gather NOAA data and pass it along to the public suddenly lose money. Those companies then try very hard to limit distribution of NOAA data by NOAA while maximizing the government spending on accurate forecasts. It’s got nothing to do with government supporting it’s self and 100% to do with legislated corruption that’s dependent on public officials playing their role.
      - 2trill2spill 6y ago
        NOAA already provides the data to the general public, its all there, so I'm not sure about the "if" in your first sentence.
        Retric 6y ago
        It’s possible to get NOAA data directly, but in terms of actual use it’s very low, because of ‘poor’ execution. That’s working as intended.
        falcolas 6y ago
        Given that General Aviation uses NOAA weather data, that alone makes the NOAA data more useful than almost any other source. They also provide data to our fishing and ocean transport ships. And, it's been available to the public via the internet for at least two decades I know of at nws.noaa.gov (which now redirects to weather.gov). NOAA's data is a stupidly valuable resource, even discounting the resellers.
- mindslight 6y ago
  Great way to drag the conversation into partisan territory of bickering over what can be obviously cut, and away from focusing on our shared problem of inappropriate penny pinching undermining services entirely!
  - chrisseaton 6y ago
    I didn't mention any political parties though? I didn't say anything could be cut though? What are you on about?
    - mindslight 6y ago
      >> the cost to fix would be peanuts > If you fix them all they add up to not peanuts and then you don't have any money left The initial criticism is worthwhile in its original context (0.02% of the agency's budget). By scaling it up, you took it out of that context so that it runs up against worries about the total budget, implying a shortfall even though the argument is about the same 0.02%. The obvious answer to your comment is "well then it's easy to cut a little from $ELSEWHERE", which will inevitably devolve into overt zero-sum partisan bickering.
      - chrisseaton 6y ago
        I think you're reading things I didn't write, there.
        mindslight 6y ago
        No, I was just looking a step ahead. The only thing your original comment added was an appeal to destructive penny pinching that often accompanies popular fiscal conservatism. For context I'm personally against wasting money. But kneecapping an organization by tightening its purse strings such that it can't fulfill its function is itself a larger waste of money.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
- _jal 6y ago
  Because if there is one thing we know, government agencies are never captured and always have priorities well-aligned with the constituencies they serve. I do understand that the peanut gallery normally has very skewed, ignorant views of what complex agencies do. I also understand if you don't question, audit, and occasionally yell at them, they go bad and (at best) stop serving the people they're supposed to.
jfrunyon 6y ago
No, the real story is that "we could slap a band-aid on it for $1.5 million, but that would only work for a little while, so why would we bother?"
wthrScam99 6y ago
Accuweather and the rest have been lobbying to hobble NOAA and NWS for decades So of course it’s corporate bureaucracy. Like with the Post Office, corporate stooges are given control and run it like shit to have something to complain about.
ip26 6y ago
“It is not clear why the NWS is considering these harmful bandwidth restrictions given the massive scalability of content delivery network (CDN) technology, cloud infrastructure and other technology solutions that are currently available,” AccuWeather’s Porter said. “It’s truly unfortunate that the NWS apparently does not recognize that this proposal is 100 percent contrary to its mission and its obligation to the American people.” Meanwhile, AccuWeather's old CEO has been working hard to slash the budget of the NWS https://weather.com/science/news/2018-02-13-trump-national-weather-service-budget-cut-jobs https://weather.com/science/news/2018-02-13-trump-national-w...
- eli 6y ago
  Accuweather is a bitter and aggressive private competitor of the NWS and their comments should be framed as such.
jiggawatts 6y ago
What is it with weather services and incompetent IT? Here in Australia, our federal "Bureau of Meteorology" (BoM) was hacked by a state-sponsored attacker, and used as a stepping stone to get into the networks of other government agencies that had private links to BoM. Not the only time they got hacked: https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2018/02/19/bureau-meteorology-scam-advertisement/ https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2018/02/19/bureau-m... This was called out a while ago: https://www.itnews.com.au/news/the-government-websites-that-still-arent-secure-531301 https://www.itnews.com.au/news/the-government-websites-that-... The money shot is: "As part of this, BoM is planning to upgrade its web presence over the next two years as part of a $31 million digital channels platform deal with Accenture." Two years later, they still don't have HTTPS on their main page. What kills me is that the main site URL is actually reachable over HTTPS. Check this out: https://www.bom.gov.au/ https://www.bom.gov.au/ You get an error message -- using HTTPS and a valid certificate -- saying: "The Bureau of Meteorology website does not currently support connections via HTTPS." and then you're redirected to HTTP! Apparently $31 million and a year of effort is sufficient to buy a $50 SSL certificate, but doesn't stretch far enough to actually deploy it... PS: In case you're wondering if this is some sort of infrastructure issue: Their site is served via Akamai CDN.
- thejosh 6y ago
  Which is hilarious how badly managed BOM is, but how much we trust it.
- cube00 6y ago
  Don't forget the failed attempt to rake in more money via advertising https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-19/scam-ads-on-weather-bureau-website/9459570 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-19/scam-ads-on-weather-b... They've since back pedaled to the point where if you visit now you'll only see in house ads for their own services.
dhnajsjdnd 6y ago
It kind of sounds like the NOAA is threatening to go on strike.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

chrisseaton 6y ago

> So, the cost to fix would be peanuts, but it's "not a priority" But there are probably thousands of things that cost only peanuts and aren't a priority. If you fix them all they add up to not peanuts and then you don't have any money left and you didn't even fix any priority tasks!

Naac 6y ago
But out of those thousand things only this one made the news no? Doesn't it deserve some extra priority?
falcolas 6y ago
Serving the public should always be a priority for a government institution. In the case of the weather, disseminating the forecasts is just as critical as making the forecasts in the first place. These forecasts directly affect everything from air travel to crop planting/harvesting to sea travel. They are critical for our economic (and citizen's) ongoing health. And the internet, for better or worse, is the primary means of dissemination for the NOAA. Failing in this is failing at one of their greatest duties, IMO.
- yetihehe 6y ago
  Instead, government institutions which are funded by government, now serve government as their main client. Public, which pays government, not institutions, is not a priority. Effectively government became an entity which is not serving the public but only itself.
  - Retric 6y ago
    The “problem” is if NOAA directly provides data to the general public then an entire ecosystem of companies that simply gather NOAA data and pass it along to the public suddenly lose money. Those companies then try very hard to limit distribution of NOAA data by NOAA while maximizing the government spending on accurate forecasts. It’s got nothing to do with government supporting it’s self and 100% to do with legislated corruption that’s dependent on public officials playing their role.
    - 2trill2spill 6y ago
      NOAA already provides the data to the general public, its all there, so I'm not sure about the "if" in your first sentence.
      - Retric 6y ago
        It’s possible to get NOAA data directly, but in terms of actual use it’s very low, because of ‘poor’ execution. That’s working as intended.
        falcolas 6y ago
        Given that General Aviation uses NOAA weather data, that alone makes the NOAA data more useful than almost any other source. They also provide data to our fishing and ocean transport ships. And, it's been available to the public via the internet for at least two decades I know of at nws.noaa.gov (which now redirects to weather.gov). NOAA's data is a stupidly valuable resource, even discounting the resellers.
mindslight 6y ago
Great way to drag the conversation into partisan territory of bickering over what can be obviously cut, and away from focusing on our shared problem of inappropriate penny pinching undermining services entirely!
- chrisseaton 6y ago
  I didn't mention any political parties though? I didn't say anything could be cut though? What are you on about?
  - mindslight 6y ago
    >> the cost to fix would be peanuts > If you fix them all they add up to not peanuts and then you don't have any money left The initial criticism is worthwhile in its original context (0.02% of the agency's budget). By scaling it up, you took it out of that context so that it runs up against worries about the total budget, implying a shortfall even though the argument is about the same 0.02%. The obvious answer to your comment is "well then it's easy to cut a little from $ELSEWHERE", which will inevitably devolve into overt zero-sum partisan bickering.
    - chrisseaton 6y ago
      I think you're reading things I didn't write, there.
      - mindslight 6y ago
        No, I was just looking a step ahead. The only thing your original comment added was an appeal to destructive penny pinching that often accompanies popular fiscal conservatism. For context I'm personally against wasting money. But kneecapping an organization by tightening its purse strings such that it can't fulfill its function is itself a larger waste of money.
        chrisseaton 6y ago
_jal 6y ago
Because if there is one thing we know, government agencies are never captured and always have priorities well-aligned with the constituencies they serve. I do understand that the peanut gallery normally has very skewed, ignorant views of what complex agencies do. I also understand if you don't question, audit, and occasionally yell at them, they go bad and (at best) stop serving the people they're supposed to.

jfrunyon 6y ago

No, the real story is that "we could slap a band-aid on it for $1.5 million, but that would only work for a little while, so why would we bother?"

wthrScam99 6y ago

Accuweather and the rest have been lobbying to hobble NOAA and NWS for decades So of course it’s corporate bureaucracy. Like with the Post Office, corporate stooges are given control and run it like shit to have something to complain about.

ip26 6y ago

“It is not clear why the NWS is considering these harmful bandwidth restrictions given the massive scalability of content delivery network (CDN) technology, cloud infrastructure and other technology solutions that are currently available,” AccuWeather’s Porter said. “It’s truly unfortunate that the NWS apparently does not recognize that this proposal is 100 percent contrary to its mission and its obligation to the American people.” Meanwhile, AccuWeather's old CEO has been working hard to slash the budget of the NWS https://weather.com/science/news/2018-02-13-trump-national-weather-service-budget-cut-jobs https://weather.com/science/news/2018-02-13-trump-national-w...

eli 6y ago
Accuweather is a bitter and aggressive private competitor of the NWS and their comments should be framed as such.

jiggawatts 6y ago

What is it with weather services and incompetent IT? Here in Australia, our federal "Bureau of Meteorology" (BoM) was hacked by a state-sponsored attacker, and used as a stepping stone to get into the networks of other government agencies that had private links to BoM. Not the only time they got hacked: https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2018/02/19/bureau-meteorology-scam-advertisement/ https://thenewdaily.com.au/news/national/2018/02/19/bureau-m... This was called out a while ago: https://www.itnews.com.au/news/the-government-websites-that-still-arent-secure-531301 https://www.itnews.com.au/news/the-government-websites-that-... The money shot is: "As part of this, BoM is planning to upgrade its web presence over the next two years as part of a $31 million digital channels platform deal with Accenture." Two years later, they still don't have HTTPS on their main page. What kills me is that the main site URL is actually reachable over HTTPS. Check this out: https://www.bom.gov.au/ https://www.bom.gov.au/ You get an error message -- using HTTPS and a valid certificate -- saying: "The Bureau of Meteorology website does not currently support connections via HTTPS." and then you're redirected to HTTP! Apparently $31 million and a year of effort is sufficient to buy a $50 SSL certificate, but doesn't stretch far enough to actually deploy it... PS: In case you're wondering if this is some sort of infrastructure issue: Their site is served via Akamai CDN.

thejosh 6y ago
Which is hilarious how badly managed BOM is, but how much we trust it.
cube00 6y ago
Don't forget the failed attempt to rake in more money via advertising https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-19/scam-ads-on-weather-bureau-website/9459570 https://www.abc.net.au/news/2018-02-19/scam-ads-on-weather-b... They've since back pedaled to the point where if you visit now you'll only see in house ads for their own services.

dhnajsjdnd 6y ago

It kind of sounds like the NOAA is threatening to go on strike.