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Yeah, they did... but being blunt, IBM had 8 years to do a lot of damage. Not speaking of the engineers or the tech behind it, I'm talking about escalating the

Yeah, they did... but being blunt, IBM had 8 years to do a lot of damage. Not speaking of the engineers or the tech behind it, I'm talking about escalating the ad revenue and general junk on their website. MOST of the page load time on weather.com and AccuWeather is ad and tracking. It's an ungodly number of requests and will drain a data plan's usage limits surprisingly quickly. Just opening weather.com will send almost 1000 requests , transfer 10.3MB. Every 30 seconds or so it will make about 300 requests + 2MB of transfer for new ads. It's... insane

jeffbee 2y ago
Ads and cookies are hardly the worst thing that AccuWeather has done. They have been lobbying the federal government for 30 years to forbid NOAA from issuing forecasts at all. They want the government to pay for all the satellites and supercomputers, and they want all that data for free, but they want you to have to pay AccuWeather for forecasts.
- Teever 2y ago
  In situations like this I feel that it is important to put a face to a name. AccuWeather, a corporation like any other is made of people. These shortsighted decisions and shitty behavior are directly attributable to people who do them for selfish reasons. So let's start talking about these people in the first person, not in the abstract. Who is directly responsible for these atrocious actions and why do they stand to benefit from them?
  - jonathankoren 2y ago
    > So let's start talking about these people in the first person, not in the abstract. Here are two: Rick Santorum and Jim Bridenstine. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/06/09/congress-is-considering-privatizing-key-roles-of-the-weather-service-thats-a-mistake/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/...
    - b112 2y ago
      This same junk happens in Canada. Attempts to disrupt pages like this: https://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/on-118_metric_e.html https://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/on-118_metric_e.html and any info from Environment Canada, being packaged in a way that might compete, with the very same people using Environment Canada's free data for-profit. Cries of "How can the Government compete with the private sector" are thrown around, always glossing over how that very data is often sourced from the Government. Pathetic. Leeches of the worst kind.
      - Teever 2y ago
        But who? Who specifically in Canada is making these cries?
  - detourdog 2y ago
    I was at a wedding where the accu-weather guy was complaining the NFL was a monopoly because they wouldn't let Rush Limbaugh buy a team...
- sea-gold 2y ago
  John Oliver had an episode[1] of Last Week Tonight which discussed some of this I believe. [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=qMGn9T37eR8 https://youtube.com/watch?v=qMGn9T37eR8
pjmorris 2y ago
At the time they bought it, I joked that IBM bought the Weather Channel as part of its Cloud strategy. I stand by that claim.

jeffbee 2y ago

Ads and cookies are hardly the worst thing that AccuWeather has done. They have been lobbying the federal government for 30 years to forbid NOAA from issuing forecasts at all. They want the government to pay for all the satellites and supercomputers, and they want all that data for free, but they want you to have to pay AccuWeather for forecasts.

Teever 2y ago
In situations like this I feel that it is important to put a face to a name. AccuWeather, a corporation like any other is made of people. These shortsighted decisions and shitty behavior are directly attributable to people who do them for selfish reasons. So let's start talking about these people in the first person, not in the abstract. Who is directly responsible for these atrocious actions and why do they stand to benefit from them?
- jonathankoren 2y ago
  > So let's start talking about these people in the first person, not in the abstract. Here are two: Rick Santorum and Jim Bridenstine. https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/2016/06/09/congress-is-considering-privatizing-key-roles-of-the-weather-service-thats-a-mistake/ https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/capital-weather-gang/wp/...
  - b112 2y ago
    This same junk happens in Canada. Attempts to disrupt pages like this: https://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/on-118_metric_e.html https://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/on-118_metric_e.html and any info from Environment Canada, being packaged in a way that might compete, with the very same people using Environment Canada's free data for-profit. Cries of "How can the Government compete with the private sector" are thrown around, always glossing over how that very data is often sourced from the Government. Pathetic. Leeches of the worst kind.
    - Teever 2y ago
      But who? Who specifically in Canada is making these cries?
- detourdog 2y ago
  I was at a wedding where the accu-weather guy was complaining the NFL was a monopoly because they wouldn't let Rush Limbaugh buy a team...
sea-gold 2y ago
John Oliver had an episode[1] of Last Week Tonight which discussed some of this I believe. [1] https://youtube.com/watch?v=qMGn9T37eR8 https://youtube.com/watch?v=qMGn9T37eR8

pjmorris 2y ago

At the time they bought it, I joked that IBM bought the Weather Channel as part of its Cloud strategy. I stand by that claim.