Wading Through AccuWeather’s Response | Hacker News Reader

Wading Through AccuWeather’s Response

daringfireball.net

190 pointscolinprince70 comments

Weather.gov is the source for most forecasts out there anyway (your TV weather guy is often just regurgitating what NOAA is saying) so I prefer to just get the info from the source and devoid of all the click bait crap that has infested most commercial weather sites.

I completely agree. I used to have a couple of pages (across various weather sites) bookmarked but nowadays I just have the "local" page on forecast.weather.gov bookmarked. No ads, no links to clickbait articles, no unrelated crap I don't care about, and it loads a helluva lot quicker and transfers much less data also.

I love wunderground because of the personal weather station support for hyper-local weather. Though at some point it's kind of a "man with one clock knows precisely what time it is, a man with two clocks is never quite sure" kind of thing.

And sadly, NOAA doesn't update their predictions even when something like rain is occurring right outside one of their offices (happened in the Monterey Bay Area).

For a quick shortcut, you can do weather.gov/<zip code> for any US location.

I'm a big fan of NOAA's Hourly Weather Graph. It tells me how much weather will happen when.

I'm a weather app junkie owing to my previous career in airline operations. I've tried (and bought) at least 95% of the decent weather app on Android. Some oldies, but goodies, like Weather Services Pro & Eye in Sky. Currently running Weather Timeline and am fairly happy. (Must have dewpoint data, or no deal!)

But all that flapping was driven by my ditching AccuWeather (Premium) when they re-did the UX in 2013, trading in simple line-art style icons (with theme choices, also) to freaking photos of the sky conditions. Completely obtuse and difficult to interpret at a glance. I have a scathing review posted (same nick handle) which I 'touch' every so often to be sure it isn't listed as a review "for a previous version of the application".

So I've been on the "Screw AccuWeather" train for lo these four-odd years now.

Welcome aboard, mateys. :-P

weather.gov/5digitzip will take you straight to what you want and is just about as easy as an app for most folks.

Using well-designed government services feels like a good habit these days.

Try it on your desktop or mobile browser, easy as pie: http://weather.gov/10018

Checking the same zip code with weather.gov and weather.com yielded 122KB / 1.6s (weather.gov) and 1.1MB / 18s (weather.com).

So we entered the era where government sites are lightweight and responsive while commercial sites are bloated and slow.

In my experience government sites aren't usually slow or bloated, they just look shitty.

I wouldn't call "shitty" something with a nice layout and readability. "Not trendy" – yes.

I wouldn't call the stereotypical government site a "nice layout". It seems like more often than not my experience with government sites is that I have no idea how to find the data I need.

Try finding a campground in Washington in the early spring. Is it open? Do they take reservations? Are they required? Good luck.

Agreed that trendy and usable are unrelated.

I've used https://www.recreation.gov/

> I wouldn't call "shitty" something with a nice layout and readability.

Yeah, me neither.

Even better, get a custom two-day chart as a 26KB PNG:

http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=33&lon=-84&Fcst...

Any way to narrow down the location further than the zip code? My zip code covers a large area touching the ocean, there's a dramatic weather difference between the coast and 5 miles inland.

From a command-line, try:

  $ curl http://wttr.in/5digitzip

(NB: SSL/TLS is enabled, w/ a self-signed certificate, so you can also use `curl -k https://`)

The REST API, https://graphical.weather.gov/xml/rest.php

I'm a huge fan of the "Hourly Weather Forecast" linked from that page; I just bookmark it. Everything I need.

http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=40.7198&lon=-73...

I use the same page -- well, the same graphs -- a few times a day (usually when trying to decide whether to ride the Harley or drive the truck). I can find out everything I want to know in just a few seconds.

To me, this raises the question of why should this class of behavior pass the app store review process?

Yeah—why should apps even be able to see the list of available Wifi networks? Or at the very least, it should require permissions, or maybe they could only see networks from a pre-specified list?

At least on Android, I think it does require permissions. The difference is that users have no idea what it is and therefore don't care. It's unfortunate that the list of on-demand permissions doesn't include doesn't include things like local network info (or internet access in general).

I personally give strong NO to any app that requests GPS location and isn't an actual map app, but Google no longer requests confirmation (or even tells you) when apps add new permissions in the same category, so every so often I have to go through my list of installed apps.

I have been trying to speak with Apple about this. Hopefully some changes will be made.

This has been interesting to follow. I went through something like ten different weather apps before settling on AccuWeather because the app itself is solid (compared to the other free options). Anyone have opinions of other iOS weather apps?

I like Weather Underground. It does have ads, but for $2 you can get rid of them for a year I think.

I remember Yahoo Weather had a good UI, but used 200MB+/month of background data even when not in use...

Edit: This is a bit off-topic, but aviationweather.gov has a METAR API that works for any airport: https://aviationweather.gov/adds/dataserver

This is a great resource if you want a specific metric from a nearby reliable source, e.g. air pressure or wind speed.

Nice, thanks. I'm sure I checked out WU previously and perhaps I just didn't like the ads. Looking again it is a good interface and $2 seems fine if the alternative is free + suspect tracking.

Yahoo Weather was actually my go-to originally but at some point they made an update that turned the thing in to like 80% ad/20% content. Plus their ads were always pretty invasive.

Just another vote for WU, which I love.

Vote for WU Storm as well.

https://darksky.net/ née forecast.io. I find the forecasts to be accurate for me. I've actually written an Emacs frontend to their service when it was forecast.io: http://www.gkayaalp.com/emacs.html#forecast.el. They let you make 1000 requests per day for free. On mobile I just go to their website through a bookmark.

I've found darksky's precipitation predictions are impressively accurate - so much so you can say 'the rain's going to stop in 5 mins' and freak out your coworkers

I used to find them accurate myself. Now 90% of the time it's "Next hour forecast temporarily unavailable (radar station is down)." The radar station somehow still shows visually on the map, though.

I used to love that, but a few years ago the accuracy dropped quite a bit for me. It's now 'now bad', no longer 'freakily accurate'.

Didn't DarkSky come out first, launching Fotecast.io later?

An app called Dark Sky came out, powered by Forecast.io. Several months ago they rebranded the service to DarkSky.net which continues to power the Dark Sky app, along with other 3rd party apps like Forecast Bar.

Nope, forecast.io became darksky.net, some months ago. Also, WRT your other comment, I live in Istanbul and find it very accurate, whenever I see that it shows some precipitation I take the umbrella with me, and thus I've spent the last two years way more drier.

http://www.weather.gov

I made a bookmarklet on my phone after searching my zip. I use the hourly weather graph which shows temp and odds of rain/snow. you have to scroll, but...

For snow storms read the alerts.

accuweather wanted to shut them down and had their senator introduce a bill, because ad free competition....

I saw the weather.gov page up once in the background of a TV station newscast.

Further tip: go to this page (for your location) and make a custom two-day chart.

http://forecast.weather.gov/MapClick.php?lat=33&lon=-84&Fcst...

Downloads from the resulting link are very fast.

Weatherline has been my choice for a few years. It has a clean interface that's easy to understand and makes viewing the next few days trivial. It uses the data from DarkSky so it's pretty accurate, but doesn't use DarkSky's confusing navigation model (I left the app when they first implemented it).

It's a paid app, no ads or creepiness.

Only complaint? No watch app. Since Apple made the built in one worse in iOS 3 (for my use case) I've been wishing for the 7 day forecast from weatherline on my wrist.

http://weatherlineapp.com

I've been using Arcus on Android, which uses the same data (from forecast.io) as the Dark Sky app on iOS. And I voluntarily installed PressureNet to report barometric pressure from my phone, because they're very clear about what data they collect and it's never been a battery drain. I believe they've been bought out by Sunshine https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/sunshine-personal-accurate/i...

I use Dark Sky for the nice design (easy to read the forecast up to a week at a glance), and NOAA Hi-Def Radar for drawing my own conclusions from Doppler radar.

I've never seen a 5-star app regress to a 1-star app with NOAA Hi-Def Radar in the latest update.

I've had a tough time finding something good on iOS. I used WxUSA for a long time (I think that's what it was called) but then the dev stopped supporting it.

Then I switched to Storm, which was awesome until they decided to stop allowing ad-free subscriptions.

Then I switched to AccuWeather until this came to light yesterday.

Now I'm using Carrot and MyRadar which so far seems to be great.

I just use the default installed one. It never occurred to me to look for anything else - it tells me basically what I want to know.

I do actually like the Apple one as well, but it lacks a radar.

I'll put in a vote for Fresh Air:

https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/fresh-air-hyperlocal-weather...

Very cool visualizations of upcoming weather.

I use the http://weather.weatherbug.com app on Android. It appears that they have an iOS version as well. I'm pleased with it and the "Spark Lightning" feature is fun.

Carrot weather is my favorite. Nothing beats a weather app planning to kill you behind your back and being snarky about it.

It’s not the most detailed weather app, but certainly the funniest.

I like RadarScope (and pay for extra features and data feeds) but that's for live radar and not the local forecast.

Canada has had Environment Canada's weather reporting for a while:

February 8, 2010: https://web.archive.org/web/20100208180217/http://www.weathe...

Today: http://weather.gc.ca/city/pages/on-143_metric_e.html

As a fun extra, I just found an Apps Gallery that uses open data: http://open.canada.ca/en/apps?_ga=2.119480777.1582349726.150...

This article is based on the iphone app. Does anyone know the situation with the android version?

It wouldn't surprise me if it was doing something similar. Why be a shitty privacy invading company on only one platform?

Time for the walled garden to throw a few perps outside the walls.

>> following the standards and best practices of the industry.

> No they’re not.

Afraid they are, and have the spreadsheets to show it.

> have the spreadsheets to show it

Please, do—if this is the standard practice, it should be prevented.

reminds me of when apple did that same exact thing https://www.wired.com/2011/04/apple-iphone-tracking/

That's not even close to being 'that exact same thing'.

Privacy Badger only reported one tracking cookie (google analytics) on OP's site. ;)

Is that unexpected?

Just seemed ironic in context. HN doesn't, for example.

Does anyone expect their information not to be monetized from any "free" application?

(with the possible exception of an open-source application built and distributed by an open-source advocate, e.g. Firefox, K-9 mail, sipdroid, DDG, etc.)

This is explicitly against the App Store terms of service, so yes it's unexpected.

If you really start taking the App Store terms of service and apply them to the letter to the Apps in the store quite a few very popular apps would vanish.

And I wish hey would, for these kind of reasons. So many popular apps flagrantly violate the rules but get to stay because their popular (Uber, Facebook, etc).

Lots of minor ones are seemingly ignored. They break rules too but Apple doesn't seem to care.

Isn't that what should happen though? I also doubt they'd vanish - iOS is too big of an audience to ignore, so unless the Terms are particularly onerous, I'd imagine most would just fall in line.

Yes. When I opt-out of sharing location information, I expect the app not to monetize my location. That's what opting out should mean.

I agree with the sentiment, but what we turn off is iOS "Location Services." It's not really possible to "opt out of sharing location information."

It's like, if I opt out of showing someone ID, I don't expect that to protect me if they guess my age some other way.

So I'm not surprised at being triangulated. The incentives (mis)align that way.

Question: Hypothetically, if Apple were collecting similiar data that would allow reasonably accurate geolocation of any iOS-running device (without explicit user consent), would this blogger be similarly upset?

In other words, does his protest extend to all unconsented collection of data that can be used to geolocate, or only to collection by certain parties of which he does not approve?

To clarify the term "unconsented", I mean outgoing connections to the third party's servers that are not intentionally initiated by the user.

For example, periodic automatic outgoing connections would be "unconsented" unless the user has to do something to initiate them and is aware she is initiating constant network traffic that will continue indefinitely. (The traffic might plausibly be used for geolocation.)

Yes

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