5 ms·

Cloudy with a Chance of Bullshit (2018)

41 points by yoloswagins 5y ago

Nextgrid 5y ago
Take this with a grain of salt, but I’ve heard that there are stupid legal reasons (lobbied for by the private sector) why government agencies such as the NOAA are prohibited from offering their own apps or services. If that’s true then I think it might be worth directing your anger there first and foremost.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- every 5y ago
  I don't know about apps but I access my local NOAA weather[1] daily on the web... [1] https://www.weather.gov/ewx/ https://www.weather.gov/ewx/
  - analog31 5y ago
    NOAA weather, on the web, has always worked for me. I've never used an app. The website is slightly klunky, but works. I get around town by bike, so it's helpful to have some indication of what I'm heading into.
- lultimouomo 5y ago
  Accuweather (which relies heavily on the national weather service data for its forecasts) lobbied for a bill in 2005 to prevent the weather service to provide data directly to people; the bill failed. Then during the Trump presidency the former Accuweather CEO (whose family still owns the company) was nominated undersecretary of the weather service, but he failed the confirmation hearings.
elliottkember 5y ago
The iPhone had a barometer for 3 years before this article was written. I believe Dark Sky used the barometer to detect changes in air pressure.
bmgxyz 5y ago
This seems to imply that there isn't any high-resolution precipitation data available that could provide these "minute-by-minute" forecasts, but that isn't true. The National Weather Service provides several radar products that give data with resolutions in the range of 500 m using their NEXRAD technology[0]. This allows for some pretty good estimates of when precipitation will start and end over the next hour or so. This kind of forecast product is called a precipitation nowcast. Other nations have similar systems. If you use the NOAA desktop tool[1] to view the data from NEXRAD stations, you can compare to services like DarkSky and see that they are very likely using it without much editing. The simplest nowcasts use optical flow techniques rather than meteorological modelling. On short time scales (less than an hour), these methods can give passable results. I built a tool[2] that pulls this NWS data from their Web server and gives you a nowcast. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexrad#Super_resolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexrad#Super_resolution [1]: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/wct/ https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/wct/ [2]: https://github.com/bmgxyz/threecast https://github.com/bmgxyz/threecast
- srl 5y ago
  Moreover, I've used minute-by-minute forecasts myself, and (at least where I lived at the time) they were quite accurate. My use case was "where is a 30 minute gap when I can walk home without getting soaked", and I never once got soaked. So much of the OP falls into the category of things-I-know-to-be-false-from-experience. The article really has a strong vibe of "algorithms are faulty, we need humans in the loop to make sure they're behaving well!", with a hidden assumption of "humans are less faulty than algorithms". That's an empirical assertion to be determined on a domain-by-domain basis. It's certainly true that having a human in the loop leads to worse outcomes in chess (unless the human has enough modesty to just not do anything). The same is increasingly true of other domains as well. Perhaps someday, incorrect, largely content-free FUD articles about how algorithms suck will themselves be written entirely by algorithms. This is pushing way too many of my buttons, so I'll just close by pointing out (on the other side of the apps/humans scale) that a substantial fraction of the time, when I check the weather on NWS, it says something like "Today's high: 56; current temperature: 58". I certainly hope that a human in the loop would fix that problem.
zoom6628 5y ago
I prefer to use ventusky free version and make up my own mind based on experience.
logical_ferry 5y ago
I use yr.no, local mountain rescue service uses them. And I am not in Norway, so I guess it says a lot about the reputation.
jpmoral 5y ago
> Basically, there’s no reliable way for users to get vetted weather information on their phones. Browsers should work, right? I check the (Australian) Bureau of Meteorology website all the time on my phone. We use it to plan family trips and when to do the washing.
jtthe13 5y ago
Unrelated to the topic, but I still don't understand how The Outline got away with launching with such a seizure-inducing design.
tomhoward 5y ago
I'm not a huge enthusiast for home automation (we don't use any voice assistants), but we have a few Mirabella IoT light globes that can turn on/off on a schedule or in response to weather conditions. Mainly I just have lights turn on before sunset, which works fine, but one of the programs I set up was for some indoor lights to turn on when it rains, as it usually gets quite gloomy here during rain. It's quite common for that program to activate and turn the lights on when it's hot and sunny with no rain or clouds anywhere nearby. I gather it must be because they're using this kind of weather forecast data and not doing any live/recent updating.
- WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
  Get an ambient light sensor and program your automation to light the lights when it's actually dark and gloomy, not when it's gloomy at, say, the nearest airport or where else they like to stick their measurement equipment.
2Gkashmiri 5y ago
Cloudy is my all time favorite animated movie. Absolutely nothing comes close. The flidsfdfr, the reporter girl, the character development and interaction, all great.

41 points by yoloswagins 5y ago

Take this with a grain of salt, but I’ve heard that there are stupid legal reasons (lobbied for by the private sector) why government agencies such as the NOAA are prohibited from offering their own apps or services. If that’s true then I think it might be worth directing your anger there first and foremost.

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
every 5y ago
I don't know about apps but I access my local NOAA weather[1] daily on the web... [1] https://www.weather.gov/ewx/ https://www.weather.gov/ewx/
- analog31 5y ago
  NOAA weather, on the web, has always worked for me. I've never used an app. The website is slightly klunky, but works. I get around town by bike, so it's helpful to have some indication of what I'm heading into.
lultimouomo 5y ago
Accuweather (which relies heavily on the national weather service data for its forecasts) lobbied for a bill in 2005 to prevent the weather service to provide data directly to people; the bill failed. Then during the Trump presidency the former Accuweather CEO (whose family still owns the company) was nominated undersecretary of the weather service, but he failed the confirmation hearings.

elliottkember 5y ago

The iPhone had a barometer for 3 years before this article was written. I believe Dark Sky used the barometer to detect changes in air pressure.

bmgxyz 5y ago

This seems to imply that there isn't any high-resolution precipitation data available that could provide these "minute-by-minute" forecasts, but that isn't true. The National Weather Service provides several radar products that give data with resolutions in the range of 500 m using their NEXRAD technology[0]. This allows for some pretty good estimates of when precipitation will start and end over the next hour or so. This kind of forecast product is called a precipitation nowcast. Other nations have similar systems. If you use the NOAA desktop tool[1] to view the data from NEXRAD stations, you can compare to services like DarkSky and see that they are very likely using it without much editing. The simplest nowcasts use optical flow techniques rather than meteorological modelling. On short time scales (less than an hour), these methods can give passable results. I built a tool[2] that pulls this NWS data from their Web server and gives you a nowcast. [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexrad#Super_resolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nexrad#Super_resolution [1]: https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/wct/ https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/wct/ [2]: https://github.com/bmgxyz/threecast https://github.com/bmgxyz/threecast

srl 5y ago
Moreover, I've used minute-by-minute forecasts myself, and (at least where I lived at the time) they were quite accurate. My use case was "where is a 30 minute gap when I can walk home without getting soaked", and I never once got soaked. So much of the OP falls into the category of things-I-know-to-be-false-from-experience. The article really has a strong vibe of "algorithms are faulty, we need humans in the loop to make sure they're behaving well!", with a hidden assumption of "humans are less faulty than algorithms". That's an empirical assertion to be determined on a domain-by-domain basis. It's certainly true that having a human in the loop leads to worse outcomes in chess (unless the human has enough modesty to just not do anything). The same is increasingly true of other domains as well. Perhaps someday, incorrect, largely content-free FUD articles about how algorithms suck will themselves be written entirely by algorithms. This is pushing way too many of my buttons, so I'll just close by pointing out (on the other side of the apps/humans scale) that a substantial fraction of the time, when I check the weather on NWS, it says something like "Today's high: 56; current temperature: 58". I certainly hope that a human in the loop would fix that problem.

zoom6628 5y ago

I prefer to use ventusky free version and make up my own mind based on experience.

logical_ferry 5y ago

I use yr.no, local mountain rescue service uses them. And I am not in Norway, so I guess it says a lot about the reputation.

jpmoral 5y ago

> Basically, there’s no reliable way for users to get vetted weather information on their phones. Browsers should work, right? I check the (Australian) Bureau of Meteorology website all the time on my phone. We use it to plan family trips and when to do the washing.

jtthe13 5y ago

Unrelated to the topic, but I still don't understand how The Outline got away with launching with such a seizure-inducing design.

tomhoward 5y ago

I'm not a huge enthusiast for home automation (we don't use any voice assistants), but we have a few Mirabella IoT light globes that can turn on/off on a schedule or in response to weather conditions. Mainly I just have lights turn on before sunset, which works fine, but one of the programs I set up was for some indoor lights to turn on when it rains, as it usually gets quite gloomy here during rain. It's quite common for that program to activate and turn the lights on when it's hot and sunny with no rain or clouds anywhere nearby. I gather it must be because they're using this kind of weather forecast data and not doing any live/recent updating.

WesolyKubeczek 5y ago
Get an ambient light sensor and program your automation to light the lights when it's actually dark and gloomy, not when it's gloomy at, say, the nearest airport or where else they like to stick their measurement equipment.

2Gkashmiri 5y ago

Cloudy is my all time favorite animated movie. Absolutely nothing comes close. The flidsfdfr, the reporter girl, the character development and interaction, all great.