Doge seeks to cancel lease on key NOAA computing facility | Hacker News Reader

Doge seeks to cancel lease on key NOAA computing facility

axios.com

The lease mentioned in the article that concerns me more is the weather radar support facility in Norman. Last time I looked into weather data, prediction quality was much worse in the places where the WSR-88D radar coverage is spotty (the West, notably the Rockies) and the models have to rely on satellites and ground sensors; and it seems like Tornado Alley will totally get screwed if the long-range radars that can see wind start to fail?

Let me guess - all weather prediction workloads now have to run on some Tesla cluster?

If they run. Might be on the resources of some other Mar-a-Lago supplicant. Or they just won't be run.

Bezos has been doing a lot of toadying the last couple of weeks, guess AWS needs more customers..

More likely someone involved in the decision to close down free weather data has an economic interest in a company selling the same data, or some other interest that stands to make money knowing about the weather forecast before the plebes do.

That plus selling off the pieces to AccuWeather

Also the weather shall only be produced by starlink satelites. For this they need to install approx 1Bn "special" Dishes for the gift price of just 5k$ each.

This is about privatization of weather data, unsurpisingingly.

There has been a big industry push to lobby noaa out of existance, cause LEO satellite networks can sell lots more data if there's no noaa service.

Also - main customers are insurance providers, who need accurate forecasting for rate setting.

Edit for sources: Federal Budget Cuts and Restructuring: The Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE), led by Elon Musk under the Trump administration, has initiated significant budget reductions and workforce downsizing across federal agencies, including NOAA. Reports indicate plans to cut approximately 50% of NOAA's workforce and reduce its budget by 30%, raising concerns about the potential privatization of weather services and the impact on public safety during extreme weather events. [1]

Project 2025 Initiative: The conservative policy blueprint known as Project 2025 proposes dismantling key components of NOAA, including the National Weather Service (NWS), and suggests privatizing weather forecasting services. Critics argue that such measures could undermine public access to essential weather data, leading to increased risks during natural disasters. [2,3,4]

AccuWeather's Lobbying Activities: AccuWeather has been reported to actively lobby for the privatization of weather services, aiming to limit public access to free NOAA data. Discussions highlight concerns that such privatization efforts could restrict the availability of critical weather information to the public. [4]

As a side note - I interviewed at a good number of weather satellite companies before my current role - it was a stated goal to "supplement noaa gaps in weather data" for "insurance & investment companies".

[1]https://www.businessinsider.com/federal-agencies-musk-doge-t... [2]https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2024/oct/08/trump-projec... [3]https://www.reddit.com/r/weather/comments/1e5xacu/accuweathe... [4]https://www.theverge.com/24279329/project-2025-tech-policy-g...

Well if anything is true about Musk and his servant Trump, it is corruption and sending Federal Dollars to the top 1% is more important than people's lives.

To be fair to Republicans, they have wanted to privatize Social Security for decades, for exactly the reason you state. Imagine what the 2% commission for Assets under Management (AUM) looks like for a hedge fund boss when trillions of dollars could be entering those funds one day.

Even though Russia and China own Elon and Trump, they should be against this. Every country, including them, relies on NOAA's weather data. I imagine the end result of this is Elon being granted a contract to provide weather data through his infrastructure much like this Sovereign Wealth Fund will be used to invest in Trump-allied companies. The entire thing is a big shakedown.

Let's see. I expect it's someone else angling for the contract.

It's Accuweather. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Weather_Service_Dutie...

China doesn't interrupt its enemies when they're making a mistake. In this case, America jumping headfirst into its own Great Leap Forward.

Although this is more like a Great Leap Backwards. Expect the same death toll, but on average none of the US will be more modernized or industrialized afterwards.

You could pretty much say the same for the Great Leap Forward, tbh. I think people, appalled at the human consequences, tend to miss that it was also a failure in its industrialisation goals; that came later.

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