Technology

You reminded me of this story from 2018 when the Trump team tried to put someone in charge of government weather data so that they could shutdown free public access, allowing private companies to use it and commercialize it

“ One particularly alarming thread explored in Lewis’s reporting follows the ongoing efforts of Barry Myers, the chief executive of AccuWeather and Trump’s pick to run the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, to privatize the agency’s practice of collecting and analyzing data that helps generate weather warnings meant to keep all of us, and not just those who can pay for it, safe.”

https://www.vulture.com/2018/07/the-coming-storm-michael-lewis-audiobook-review.html

https://qz.com/1341347/michael-lewis-audiobook-the-coming-storm-is-public-weather-data-at-risk-of-privatization

Steve Bannon is sadly already ahead of you:

The two networks’ shared ownership has alarmed some meteorologists, who say that WeatherNation is helping to legitimize the extreme viewpoints aired on Real America’s Voice, occasionally sharing its forecasts on the political network; at times the networks feature the same advertisers. These critics also argue that in its own coverage, WeatherNation fosters climate change skepticism by shunning any mention of the established links between human-driven climate warming and the disasters the channel covers, thus discouraging viewers from considering the consequences of climate change

https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/02/20/weathernation-real-americas-voice-bannon/

If paywall:

https://web.archive.org/web/20230221114035/https://www.washingtonpost.com/climate-environment/2023/02/20/weathernation-real-americas-voice-bannon/

Another article with tons of linked sources: https://checkmyads.org/branded/how-proctor-gamble-ended-up-funding-steve-bannons-war-room/

He'll probably rename it to 🌦️

This timeline is disturbingly absurd, making it increasingly likely that we could indeed face such a situation.

Too late, it's been shit for years now.

That's incredible. Both of those apps INSTANTLY became so much worse after they were bought out.

I still use it, mostly because I've been using them for nearly two decades and they've been the most consistently accurate in forecasting for my area.

But since the IBM acquisition, the app has been so slow to load.

Data, probably.

Only the mobile app. They don't own the tv channel.

IBM planned to leverage its Watson technology as part of the acquisition, foreseeing its use for weather analytics and predictions. The deal, which closed the following January,[27] does not include the Weather Channel itself, which remained owned by the Bain/Blackstone/NBCUniversal consortium, and entered into a long-term licensing agreement with IBM for use of its weather data and "The Weather Channel" name and branding

Wikipedia page for The Weather Channel

What is your forecast about it?

Hate to tell you this, but it’s been shitty since the NEXRAD feeds broke and they never bothered to fix ‘em.

They've been shitty since TWC bought them. Maybe a little before when they killed their old web interface which was informative and fast and replaced it with a new design that was difficult to read information, and worst of all, slow as fuck. That's about when I stopped subscribing.

IBM will still sell you a brand new, updated mainframe in 2023.

They’re also in the open source software space (IBM owns Red Hat, a software company that has a lot of projects for Linux. Red Hat has their own Linux distro too)

We did away with that pesky business failures. Now all corporate are eternal.

I knew they were a thing because I run into them in IT from time to time... but had no idea they owned the weather channel. Wild.

I work with their iseries servers daily, they are very much still a thing

Windy

I think it’s fair to look at IBM with a more cynical eye. Historically it’s been “acquire, way you’ll make no changes, wait a bit, make changes that piss off 80% of your customer base.” Somewhere in there is a “reduce customer service effectiveness” step that is distinct from “make changes.”

After that it’s either “sell it off to the highest bidder” or “keep at it because who else are the customers gonna use?”

It's a bummer that Google sold it's registry to ~~GoDaddy~~Squarespace.

EDIT: seems like I remember it incorrectly

I hear this a lot, but every company I've been a part of that did it seemed to be a bad idea. If a division makes money, the only reason to sell is because you believe the investment in that division can be used to make more money (for less). Getting rid of a profitable entity is usually greed based.