11 ms·

Weather.gov 2.0

• piker 3y ago
  Drupal. Interesting choice in 2024
  • bsenftner 3y ago
    I agree. Unless Drupal redesigned their core, the way plugins and themes work is insecure by design. Similar to how software was back in the 80's where it was assumed no bad actors were running within the environment, and due to that assumption every single thing is available to be mucked with.
    • dubcanada 3y ago
      Is there a CMS with such an ability?
      • kapilvt 3y ago
        Plone was closest I saw, also run by several gov agencies, but drupal popularity won out to due to ease of staffing.
    • deleted 3y ago
      [deleted]
    • calvinmorrison 3y ago
      Yeah this is why you use a php platform like laravel which actually is engineered to build abd extend rather than say WordPress with an insane plugin system
      • karlshea 3y ago
        Drupal is way more similar to Laravel these days (Drupal is now also built on top of Symfony) than WordPress.
    • treflop 3y ago
      You don’t have to use third-party plugins or themes though? I mean if you built a site from scratch in Spring or Next.js and you start using third-party libraries or UI frameworks, all those third-party bits have full access to everything too.
    • chx 3y ago
      > the way plugins and themes work is insecure by design. Tell us more. (A lot more. "Extraordinary claims require extraordinary proof".)
      • bsenftner 3y ago
        Anytime any plugin does anything, the submission of that "anything" into the Drupal subsystem proceeds to pass that plugin's payload to every single plugin in the system so they can make modifications. What those modifications are, you do not know, they are just applied and then your modified payload is accepted into the subsystem to modify whatever it modifies.
        • chx 3y ago
          If you are installing rogue code then you will have a bad time. Modules/themes on drupal.org which show "Stable releases for this project are covered by the security advisory policy" are written by trusted users. There is no other protection from rogue code because they are inherently able to access the database. It utterly doesn't matter what extension points the code supports and how because of that. In very broad strokes, if you are using any CMS which a) accesses a database b) allows installing additional code and it runs that in the same process as the CMS code accessing the database -- then you are vulnerable to rogue code. Like, a headless CMS where the frontend only talks to it via an API is protected from rogue code in the frontend part but that's about it. This means the Drupal ecosystem is vulnerable to a supply chain attack, yes but ... um ... that doesn't make Drupal design insecure, does it?
          • bsenftner 3y ago
            Consider that often, far too often, a hierarchically senior non-tech individual mandates that various plugins be installed, without security checks or plugins that fail security checks, but that manager/c-suite individual demands the change. Far too often.
            • chx 3y ago
  • dubcanada 3y ago
    Not really, most government websites use it. It’s still very popular.
    • bazil376 3y ago
      Most? Source?
      • dubcanada 3y ago
        https://groups.drupal.org/government-sites https://groups.drupal.org/government-sites https://www.acquia.com/blog/drupal-for-government https://www.acquia.com/blog/drupal-for-government https://www.drupal.org/industries/government https://www.drupal.org/industries/government https://www.zyxware.com/article/6229/top-7-reasons-why-drupal-best-cms-federal-sites https://www.zyxware.com/article/6229/top-7-reasons-why-drupa... https://www.drupal.org/openplus https://www.drupal.org/openplus https://www.applytosupply.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/g-cloud/services/315701751718009 https://www.applytosupply.digitalmarketplace.service.gov.uk/... Now most may be a stretch, it's a hard metric to calculate without going around and counting every gov site. But for English speaking countries, it is very popular enough so that I'd say most gov/state/department websites are Drupal. That and I am a Drupal consultant. So I may be biased.
  • circusfly 3y ago
    Wheels remain an interesting choice in 2024 as well.
• ahmedfromtunis 3y ago
  I wish there was a single place where all government related (open-source) projects are listed; maybe a usa-gov organization on GitHub where all repos can be easily accessible.
  • jaz 3y ago
    It's not exactly a single place, but this page [0] lists the Github organizations for many federal agencies. It's not comprehensive, notably it's missing the NSA organization [1]. [0] https://code.gov/agencies https://code.gov/agencies [1] https://github.com/nationalsecurityagency https://github.com/nationalsecurityagency
    • xenophonf 3y ago
      It's missing https://github.com/niaid/ https://github.com/niaid/ and related NIAID repositories, too.
  • Maxious 3y ago
    https://government.github.com/community/ https://government.github.com/community/ also has international organisations
  • sofixa 3y ago
    France has https://code.gouv.fr/ https://code.gouv.fr/, and sources are published on GitHub and SourceHut: https://github.com/codegouvfr https://github.com/codegouvfr https://git.sr.ht/~codegouvfr/ https://git.sr.ht/~codegouvfr/
  • prepend 3y ago
    GitHub doesn’t really allow nested or even related organizations so it would be a nightmare to have all repos in a single org. There is a GitHub for government [0] but it relies on contribs and isn’t very complete. GSA started code.gov under the Obama administration with the aim to create a single index of all government projects. It withered under Trump and was basically defunded under Biden so they don’t really do much other than link out to major agencies and there’s no longer a requirement to timely index. My org has like a 1000 repos and we’re one of hundreds of agencies so I can’t imagine collecting all these together without a little effort. The original code.gov worked pretty well as everyone just dropped a code.json file onto their web site and GSA scooped them up and combined them into a single. So it’s a real shame they stopped doing that, and stopped asking people to publish their code.jsons as it was a good idea. [0] https://government.github.com/community/ https://government.github.com/community/
• TedHerman 3y ago
  One wonders if there had been similar "How will we ultimately succeed or fail" manifests for the Boeing 737 Max and for Gemini.
  • barelyauser 3y ago
    For any corporation everything can be boiled down to: profit or loss?
    • dopylitty 3y ago
      Yep, for government agencies the mission is to actually do good useful things. That contrasts with for profit companies' missions of siphoning the most money out of customers' wallets into the bank accounts of wealthy execs and shareholders by doing the least work possible and abusing your employees as much as possible. You can even see it in the mission statement in the link: >Because the mission and culture at NWS is built around serving, preparing, and protecting people, the site must do the same.
  • geodel 3y ago
    For Boeing it could be "door unhinges and blows away at 30K feet and no-one reports in media" For Gemini it would be everyone appreciate on how stunning and brave it is to deliver social justice.
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• speff 3y ago
  I’ve been using weather.gov as a no-BS site for getting local weather data that I knew would be stable (cough, DarkSky, cough). I’m a bit concerned that the ReadMe seems to only describe covering emergency events+broadcasting in 2.0. I could’ve missed it, but I hope porting over existing functionality is in scope after the MVP
  • ChrisArchitect 3y ago
    After Dark sky went I've been using https://merrysky.net/ https://merrysky.net/ and the pirateweather data it's based on seems pretty good.
    • atomicfiredoll 3y ago
      Same, MerrySky been a very handy lens to view the data through. And, Pirate Weather has been a good, open source, drop in replacement for the parts of DarkSky I was using in Home Assistant.
  • seanosaur 3y ago
    > Our strategy for our Minimal Viable Product (MVP) is to make it easier to communicate forecasts and conditions for regular and hazardous weather in a way that anyone can find, understand, and use to take action. I think they've got you covered. Maybe not directly porting over, but it sounds like they're aware of the non-emergency use cases.
  • be_erik 3y ago
    This new API coupled with their old API makes creating a DarkSky clone pretty simple. Here's mine: https://wthr.cloud/ https://wthr.cloud/ I'll definitely end up using the broadcasting/eventing API for push notifications.
    • flymasterv 3y ago
      Very nice. Beats mine: https://emvee.rocks/weather.html https://emvee.rocks/weather.html
    • 3y ago
• JohnKemeny 3y ago
  See also https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31965812 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31965812 "Norwegian Meteorological Institute has an excellent free weather API"
• maxerickson 3y ago
  Glad to see that they don't want to mandate it. The big radar update they did a few years ago was a disaster (slow, no easy deep links) that they have backed away from.
  • destitude 3y ago
    Yes, the new radar ux was a disaster. Forced me to find another source.
  • superkuh 3y ago
    Backed away from? They never even fixed the 'lite' version so that you could actually use the radar images to predict when it will rain (the image is so tiny it's useless: https://radar.weather.gov/ridge/standard/CONUS_loop.gif https://radar.weather.gov/ridge/standard/CONUS_loop.gif). During the transition period years I must have sent a dozen emails to the noaa people asking them to please keep a simple animated radar image of CONUS available. It would be an easy thing. But they're absolutely dedicated to web application only access to weather data. And the most frustrating thing is that the links to the https://radar.weather.gov/ https://radar.weather.gov/ 'lite' version are only visible if you sucessfully execute JS. So the no-JS version is invisible to no-JS browsers. Whoever they had designing this front end had never heard of graceful degredation, let alone progressive enhancement. It remains an accessibility nightmare. Weather.gov 2.0 will be more of the same.
    • maxerickson 3y ago
      https://radar.weather.gov/ridge/standard/CONUS-LARGE_loop.gif https://radar.weather.gov/ridge/standard/CONUS-LARGE_loop.gi... is quite a bit bigger. I usually use the local radar gif though. My local office forecast pages link to the lite radars. It's straightforward to take a peak at the available gifs: https://radar.weather.gov/ridge/standard/ https://radar.weather.gov/ridge/standard/
      • superkuh 3y ago
        I'll be... the finally did it. Thanks for the update!
• bazil376 3y ago
  I see there is a contributing.MD file, but it’s hard for me to really tell how I can contribute. As a perspective contributor, it would be nice to know how best to contribute.
  • chrisweekly 3y ago
    perspective (point of view) -> prospective (potential) sharing in hopes it's helpful, not to be pedantic
    • bazil376 3y ago
      Thank you honestly I’m just dictating to my phone today because I’m so under the weather. Toddler germs getting the best of me.
• ck2 3y ago
  vaguely related, single most useful url on weather.gov imho, just change lat/lon https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?FcstType=graphical&textField1=37.422131&textField2=-122.084801 https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?FcstType=graphical... just wish it could do the same layout historically in the past
  • circusfly 3y ago
    Too scientificy for my, I prefer https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=37.7771&lon=-122.4197 https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=37.7771&lon=-1...
• momothereal 3y ago
  Looks like this is being done under contract/partnership with 18F (GSA): https://18f.gsa.gov/ https://18f.gsa.gov/ > The fundamental problem that we’ve observed is that weather.gov reflects its organizational silos (Conway's Law) more than its users’ needs. A lack of overall strategy, feedback/monitoring, and tools have perpetuated this problem. Wow, my org would not have the guts to write that down in a public README!
  • weberer 3y ago
    > feedback/monitoring This makes me worried that they're going to add some "analytics" tracking scripts in there that come with those damned annoying cookie pop-ups.
    • momothereal 3y ago
      They actually have an in-house solution for this: https://analytics.usa.gov/ https://analytics.usa.gov/ (though based on Google Analytics) Details here: https://digital.gov/guides/dap/common-questions-about-dap/ https://digital.gov/guides/dap/common-questions-about-dap/
    • j16sdiz 3y ago
      AFIAK, EU privacy law have provision for exemption to foreign governments bodies. So, no cookie popup
    • acomjean 3y ago
      I go to weather.gov often and have actually filled out one of their pop up surveys. I suspect thats the feedback.
  • redserk 3y ago
    I wish more groups would be as transparent. Silos happen. I'm not willing to spread blame. I will aside some of my frustration if I know it's an acknowledged problem and there's willingness to address it.
    • 3y ago
• NelsonMinar 3y ago
  Dumb question but is this 2.0 live somewhere I can use it or just source code in development? I remember about 8 years ago there was an "experimental" site for one of the US government's aviation weather products. And it was so very good, designed modern and usable and clean. Didn't look at all like the usual awkward government website. The team seemed like nice folks too but were caught up in some multi-year government funding system. It eventually got shut down and IIRC, none of their work ever got promoted to the main site. We are very lucky in the US to have a fantastic weather service and a mandate for their products to be free and public domain. Unfortunately there's also a lot of political pressure on them to not be too good so that some commercial company can profit. AccuWeather was one such company, at least back in 2005: https://www.onthecommons.org/privatizing-weather/index.html https://www.onthecommons.org/privatizing-weather/index.html
  • huy-nguyen 3y ago
    The README says they’re done with prototyping and are now building the MVP.
  • divbzero 3y ago
    Looks like they have staging environments set up but probably not live to the public: https://github.com/weather-gov/weather.gov/tree/main/.github/workflows https://github.com/weather-gov/weather.gov/tree/main/.github...
    • boris-ning-usds 3y ago
      Found it, it might not have much though. https://weathergov-staging.app.cloud.gov/ https://weathergov-staging.app.cloud.gov/
  • monkburger 3y ago
    Barry Myers / Accuweather would love nothing more than to privatize all weather forecasting services, which means I, and my colleagues at SPC, would be out of a job
  • deleted 3y ago
    [deleted]
• riemannzeta 3y ago
  A vision of what the future could be for all of our federal agencies. Kudos to the National Weather Service for leading.
• circusfly 3y ago
  You're doing great! radar.weather.gov is a terrific site, works on all devices, works extremely well and with zero Ads, please keep up the great work!
  • ericjmorey 3y ago
    I've found it to be the exact opposite. It doesn't work well at all on mobile. It's overwhelmingly complex for anyone looking for something simple and useful like what was offered before. It's incredibly slow and has more limited useful information compared to its predecessor.
• givemeethekeys 3y ago
  Does anyone know where we can see the prototype? Is it a working prototype (is it this code?). Thanks!
  • mdaniel 3y ago
    I hope I don't cause someone's pager to go off on a Saturday by linking to a staging site from HN :pray: Some other kind soul <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39574022 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39574022> found the staging (and eric and greg, heh) manifests <https://github.com/weather-gov/weather.gov/blob/6e98dcff73bc88089d359b676307b5ed276671f5/manifests/manifest-design.yaml#L12 https://github.com/weather-gov/weather.gov/blob/6e98dcff73bc...>, which led to <https://weathergov-api-proxy.app.cloud.gov https://weathergov-api-proxy.app.cloud.gov> which led to https://weathergov-design.app.cloud.gov/point/35.198/-111.651 https://weathergov-design.app.cloud.gov/point/35.198/-111.65... containing the banner "This is a beta site. https://weather.gov/ https://weather.gov/ remains the authoritative source of weather information." so chances are it's that https://weathergov-staging.app.cloud.gov/point/35.198/-111.651 https://weathergov-staging.app.cloud.gov/point/35.198/-111.6... also works, but was slower. I didn't try eric or greg's copy :-P
• makk 3y ago
  “Weather.gov 2.0 will only succeed if everyone with NWS sees the site reflect their values, much like the agency” “Strategy for prioritization: … Add complexity, ASAP”
• deleted 3y ago
  [deleted]
• nikolaj 3y ago
  I wonder if this will impact api.weather.gov.. I hacked a little wunderground inspired dashboard a while back (https://weather.nikolaj.dev https://weather.nikolaj.dev) that I still use most days.. but have stalled out a bit in rolling my own marine forecast for surf reports. Would love if they finally populated those fields (saves me figuring out the grib files)
  • patcon 3y ago
    Fwiw one of their architectural diagrams or api.weather.gov outside the scope of this project :)
  • datadrivenangel 3y ago
    I love this! Weather underground's 10 day forecast is my favorite UI/layout, but the ads haven gotten brutal.
  • eclipticplane 3y ago
    I like the interface. Nit: it redirected me to San Diego weather after a few seconds after I had already put in a different location. Maybe because I block the location request?
• therein 3y ago
  Is the data still coming from Raytheon?
• VoodooJuJu 3y ago
  I love the weather.gov website as it currently is. Can't wait for the new one to be bloated JS soup optimized for TikTok'ers.
• vorticalbox 3y ago
  > Everyone’s feedback has to be factored into the solution This generally seems impossible, what if people have conflicting feedback?
  • ejb999 3y ago
    thats what makes bureaucracies run (govt and big corps) - and why it is so frustrating if you come from a startup or small consultancy background to operate in huge bureaucracies - many folks in these big orgs only job is to sit in meetings and study things to death or else raise objections to theoretical problems that may never happen - in order to justify their existence, thinking that the more they study the problem, the better the solution will be - it usually does not end up with a better solution - just a late one, and more expensive and bloated.
• uneekname 3y ago
  weather.gov is unironically one of my favorite websites, and I visit it almost every day. I am cautiously optimistic about this new version!
• catgirlinspace 3y ago
  Would be neat if this new site gives a bit more visibility to CWOP stations.
• lmeyerov 3y ago
  Something I was hoping to see is more about APIs for folks making their own specialized experiences. NOAA is doing a good job at raw data, but a lot of gov services consumption & utilization is more specific. We are building some emergency management tools here (genAI first: continuous monitoring -> alerting, chatbots, tailored sitrep reports: feel free to reach out!), and as many agencies, utilities, etc, need specialized variants, I've come to appreciate the last mile data & UI difficulties that weather.gov must be solving internally and would benefit other agencies. Weather.gov afaict is run by NWS under NOAA, so interesting it's not in the mission revamp here..
• everybodyknows 3y ago
  > This has led to a disorganized repository of valuable information that external users struggle to use ... Not my experience: forecast.weather.gov works just great for me as it is now. Anyone else getting flashbacks of the Reddit/Gnome/KDE/... UI renovations?
• sn9 3y ago
  The weather.gov forecast graphs are the most useful ones I'm aware of and the ones I turn to first whenever I want to know about the weather. Example: https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=37.7771&lon=-122.4197&unit=0&lg=english&FcstType=graphical https://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=37.7771&lon=-1...
  • joveian 3y ago
    Yes, I have a window manager hotkey to pop up the hourly weather image for my location in mpv, I recommend this as a good way to get a quick look at the weather today or tomorrow. I also have a shell alias to use kitten icat to display it in the terminal, although I use the mpv hotkey more. I also have a text weather alias in the terminal that just calls curl on the file that matches my location under: https://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/data/forecasts/zone/ https://tgftp.nws.noaa.gov/data/forecasts/zone/ I just looked through my state to find the right file but it looks like the "More Local Wx" link from the 7 day forcast page has the right name for the file (ORZ006 in my case). I also have a few icat aliases to show radar; one for current, one for sequential, and one looping from this page (radar name same as on radar.weather.gov): https://radar.weather.gov/ridge/standard/ https://radar.weather.gov/ridge/standard/ However, I find the one hour accumulation view to be best and I couldn't find a way to get images for that view so I usually look at radar.weather.gov if it works (it has been working better lately but sometimes just doesn't work for me). I haven't ended up looking at them often but I also made some icat aliases for 6-10 day and monthly temperature and precipitation outlook from: https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/610day/ https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/610day/ https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/30day/ https://www.cpc.ncep.noaa.gov/products/predictions/30day/